Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, May 3, 2021

• Twitter isn’t censoring accounts to keep users ‘safe’, it is using its power to spoon-feed the world establishment narratives by Eva Bartlett from RT.

• Daily Deluge: Billionaires Rule, The People Lose by Paul Haeder from Dissident Voice.
  

• World’s Most Tyrannical Regime Can’t Stop Babbling About “Human Rights” from the weblog of Australian Caitlin Johnstone who provides us with an audio and written version. My reaction: This is another obvious expression of the "woke" phenomenon referred to in yesterday's Escobar post. The following paragraph sums up the use of "human rights" by the agents of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.
  

In Imperialist Brain Worms World, “human rights” is nothing other than a propaganda weapon to be used for building antagonistic international coalitions, manufacturing consent for invasions and regime change ops, and spinning the dominant narrative in support of starvation sanctions and world-threatening cold war escalations. It’s just mass-scale concern trolling of the most destructive and malignant sort imaginable.

• Biden's Corrupt Profiteering War Machine In Plain Sight featuring Jimmy Dore and Ron Placone satirically exposing the continuing revolving door between the Pentagon and private "defense" contractors in a 3:55m YouTube video.

• The Criminalization of Dissent by CJ Hopkins, a major satirist, from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc. (Note: Hopkins is an American playwright, novelist and political satirist currently living in Germany.)

... in “New Normal” Germany, if you dissent from the official state ideology, you are now officially a dangerous “extremist.” The German Intelligence agency (the “BfV”) has even invented a new category of “extremists” in order to allow themselves to legally monitor anyone suspected of being “anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security,” like … you know, non-violently protesting, or speaking out against, or criticizing, or satirizing, the so-called “New Normal.”

 
Naturally, I’m a little worried, as I have engaged in most of these “extremist” activities.

 

Hopkins is serious. And, he discovers this phenomenon in the USA, the center of the transnational capitalist Empire.

• On the Insidious Discourse of “Terrorism” in the US and How It Functions to Demonize Palestine Advocates and Muslims by Rima Najjar from Global Research. 
  

• Washington’s Green Branches in Europe by Diana Johnstone from Consortium News. 

Russia is a great nation with an important place in European history and culture. Washington’s policy is to expel Russia from Europe in order to secure its own domination of the rest of the continent. 

• What if there really is a God? by Philip Roddis, a Brit, from his weblog Steel City Scribblings.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, January 24, 2021

• The Will to Believe: Americans and their Divine Masters by Edward Curtin from Off-Guardian.
  

• That’s All Folks! by CJ Hopkins, a master satirist who offers his take on the exit of Pres. Trump from the White House and related matters.  

• Mob mentality: Capitol riot exploited to expand the national security state that failed to stop it by Aaron Maté from The Grayzone.
  

• Catherine Austin Fitts on The State of Our Currencies featuring James Corbett and Catherine Austin Fitts discussing solutions at a high level of abstraction via 33:34m video from The Corbett Report. My reaction: I don't normally post such discussions, but this post sounds so promising. Because their discussion is such a high level of abstraction, I can't understand most of what they are talking about. Can you? But I will be patient and wait for further clarification.

• Telegram Passes 500 Million Users As People Seek Facebook & Twitter (Big Tech) Alternatives by Arjun Walia from Collective Evolution.
  

• The Enthronement of False Dimitry, and What Will Happen Next by Stephen Karganovic from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• The Illusion of Democracy: Government by the Rich for the Even Richer by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My reaction: He seriously understates our fake democracy.
  

• Confessions of a Deprogrammed Trump Supporter by Canadian Matthew Ehret from Strategic Culture Foundation. My commentary follows: 

In this article Ehret is doing an obvious parody of a "deprogrammed" Trump supporter which is showing signs of becoming the latest fake theme in today's "news" provided by media corporations in America (see also this post). 

Matthew Ehret is developing of following. He is becoming a "political genius" by increasing numbers of acolytes of America and abroad. He joins a list of several other "geniuses" (James Corbett, Derrick Broze, etc.) of American politics who are proposing to lead the way out of the political mess the country is in. Ehret's articles are posted on popular critical websites like Strategic Culture Foundation and Fort Russ News (the latter appears to be posting exclusively his articles). Let me be clear--I don't share this current fawning and fashionable trend. I occasionally post articles authored by these people that shed some light on current problems. Although these "geniuses" function as good critics of American politics, they don't offer any effective solutions to this growing crisis of capitalist rule.

Ehret is another carefully guided well-read person whose mind has been prepared by 75 years of Empire "education" that forbade any reference to Marxist thought or ideas. In 1963 I graduated from a major university with a BA degree in political sociology, but I was never assigned a reading by Marx or Marxist oriented writers! I had to use the university's library to read such literature.

• What Snowden's Exile Says About America by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. (Berletic is an American, and former member of the Marine Corps, who lives in Thailand.)
  

• Nationwide Dementiafest: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Faces of Lockdowns by Amelia Janaskie, Jenin Younes, and Taleed Brown from American Institute for Economic Research. (Note: This post features three people from New York City who comment (via video) about the effects of the pandemic on the people they serve and on themselves. None of the three videos are longer than 12:04m. If this interested you, you may also be interested in a video on how the lockdown is affecting French students.)
  

• Risks of the Pfizer BioNtech vaccine – Dr. Louise Lagendijk (video) posted by Vanessa Beeley on her weblog The Wall Will Fall.
  

• Can US Workers Be Dismissed for Refusing to Be Vaxxed? by Stephen Lendman from Global Research.
  

• The Vaccine Race: Yet Another US Weapon for World Domination by Valery Kulikov from New Eastern Outlook. 

• Decentralization Urgent as Big Tech Condemns Free Speech by Dr. Joseph Mercola from his weblog Mercola.

• The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly Is the covid ‘pandemic’ merely economic theatre? by Maribel Tuff from Off-Guardian. (Note: This post offers some relatively different views on the pandemic and related matters.)
  

• Indian Farmers on the Frontline Against Global Capitalism by Colin Todhunter from Off-Guardian.
  

• Deir Ezzor is a Sign of Things to Come by "The Ister" for "The Saker" Blog.
  

• Realizing the Dream of Communal Cities: A Conversation with Jennifer Lemus and José Luis Sifontes by Cira Pascual Marquina from Internationalist 360°. My commentary follows:

Although ordinary people in this article credit Hugo Chávez for their communal structure, I think that such people should be credited for the realization of bottom-up control of their nation of Venezuela come true. They have been severely tested by the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire and have passed the test.

In a two week visit in late 2005 in which we visited various communes and listening to officials, I wasn't impressed by their support. I don't think that the bureaucrats that were appointed by Chavez truly believed that such a project was possible--even Chavez didn't take the communal structure seriously enough. Chavez too often used the communal structure as a political base for his elections, and I found some of the officials in his government unaware of the details of the communal structure. My commentary in 2010 reveals my doubts about the Venezuelan radical experiment.

But thanks to ordinary people like Lemus and Sifontes, the nation is on the way to implementing the dreams of Chavez and the people of Venezuela.

• Twitter Latin America coordinator exposed as right-wing operative, amid anti-AMLO social media purge by Ben Norton from The Grayzone.
  

• Gen Z’s Call to Arms: Climate Crisis, to 9:57m video from RT (via a YouTube channel) in which Holland Cooke interviews Dr. Reese Halter, biologist and author.

Gen Z activists worldwide are answering a call to arms, as climate change continues to be a looming existential threat. Biologist and author of “The Gen Z Emergency” Dr. Reese Halter explains how our click-happy consumer culture has fueled the decline of global ecosystems. The youth of 2021 are taking matters into their own hands, acknowledging the failures of their predecessors to combat ecological extinction events.

• Complex Life Threatened by Robert Hunziker from Dissident Voice.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, March 5, 2020

• The Automatic Earth composed by Steven Bryant from his website.

The Automatic Earth, for wind ensemble + electronics, addresses the ongoing climate catastrophe and evokes the psychological effect of the impending disruptive change to our entire way of living on the planet, even under a best-case scenario. Our way of life is unsustainable, therefore it will not continue. The piece weaves together two threads: the climate crisis, and the technological transformation of what it is to be human. The tandem acceleration of technological wonder and ecological catastrophe means, at best, a strange, unrecognizable future, likely within our own lifetimes. I do not know if we will survive as a species: if we continue as we are now, average world temperature will increase around 8ªC within eighty years, which would result in runaway warming and a Venus-like atmosphere that virtually no life on earth can withstand. If we do survive, it will be via monumental feats of geo-engineering and human re-engineering, surpassed only by an extraordinary change in our willingness to cooperate with each other. Humanity will be forever altered. This way of life will die. The question is whether or not we will die with it.

• ClearCut – The Wages of Dominion by John Riggs from Edge Effects. The title implies reference to the mythology of Judeo-Christian religions:

... God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

• Scott Morrison's duty is to protect the Australian people. There is no greater threat than climate disruption. By David Spratt and Ian Dunlop from Climate Code Red (based in Australia). (Note: Scott Morrison is Prime Minister of Australia.)

• Is the U.S. Fracking Boom Based on Fraud? by Justin Mikulka from Desmog.

• The Long History of Elite Rule: What Will It Take To End It? by Chuck Churchill from CounterPunch. (Note: My translation: "The Long History of Ruling Classes: ...")

• Stop Calling It A “Stutter” :  Here Are Dozens Of Examples Of Biden’s Dementia Symptoms by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 

• Bernie Needs New Strategy For Biden His “Good Friend” featuring Jimmy Dore of The Jimmy Dore Show (via YouTube). (Note: Because Dore is once again (like in 2016) disillusioned by Bernie's (Sanders) namby-pamby (def.) campaign, he goes off on a rant against Sanders and his advisors for running such a campaign. Also, see this about another such comedian.)

• Putin-Erdogan meeting: a storm is expected over the “mother of all battles” in Idlib; Ayn al Arab is at stake by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog.

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.

Competition Is Dying, and Taking Capitalism With It

Click here to access article by Jonathan Tepper from Bloomberg. (Edited for clarity at 5:45 PM CT.)

Tepper is unwittingly supporting Marxist views of the intrinsic course of the development of capitalism. I have no doubt that this is because of his education about such matters that were restricted to ideological interpretations of history that students are exposed to in US higher education. Thus, the author concentrates on remarks made by an early ideologist of the capitalist religion, Adam Smith and his work The Wealth of Nations.

In 1776 Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations,” and the American Continental Congress declared independence from Britain. Smith complained bitterly about monopolies. He wrote of the East India Company: “… the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained … has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.”

Among the reasons the Continental Congress cited for separating from Britain in the Declaration of Independence was, “For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” The Boston Tea Party was in response to the East India Company’s monopoly on tea.

“The Wealth of Nations” and the Declaration of Independence were bold statements against the abuses of monopoly power. Americans wanted entrepreneurial freedom to build businesses in a free market.

The elites at the eve of the American Revolution found that the British Crown's monopoly of the East India Company and other restrictions by the British (because they saw America as a colony that should serve the British Empire) interfered with their businesses interests. These early American elites like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison had control of a very rich continent, but they were faced with two major problems: they were bound by British restrictions which limited their exploitation of these riches. The other major obstacle was that labor was necessary to acquire these riches. Earlier they made up for this lack by importing slaves from Africa. At some point this American ruling class saw the need to establish their own nation in order to obtain the riches and power they thought they deserved. To accomplish this they needed the help of free labor, and the latter were soon enlisted in the Revolution by such stirring propaganda pieces like the Declaration of Independence, the writings of people like Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry. After the revolution succeeded, they quietly forgot about the radical ideas contained in these writings.

Tepper bemoans the development of a few giant corporations that control an industry and can ignore customer demands for service and quality. He argues that this situation is not capitalism, and thereby ignores all the Marxist literature and common sense about capitalist enterprises and their need to grow and combine in order to reduce competition. His grasp of history is that of an elementary school kid who has been fed only propaganda to justify capitalism. Hence, his regard for the system is very much like a faith-based religion: Adam Smith is Jesus Christ and The Wealth of Nations is the Bible.  

In Almost All Western Colonies No Alternative Views Allowed, Victims Blame Themselves

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook.

World traveler and passionate humanist Vltchek reports on what life is really like in many areas of the world that are not reported in any Western media. Thus, to many Westerners the plight of many of the world's people, which is due to the plundering system of capitalism led by the US Empire, go unrecognized and unknown because of the censorship of Western media corporations.

The West is manufacturing simplistic, uniformed and one-sided ‘pseudo reality’ for all of its colonies and client states. It is one-type-fits-all sort of ‘pseudo reality’, intended to sustain collaborators and their regimes and to make the voices of people who are tormented, completely irrelevant. In fact, those who are robbed of everything are not supposed to even realize that they are being bled.

Iran’s 1979 revolution picked up the People’s torch first lit in 1917 Russia

(Edited for errors at 4PM Seattle time.)

Click here if you wish to access an article (posted on A bird's eye view of the Vineyard) that I believe illustrates a profound insight: no one person can be absolutely knowledgeable about everything or anything, there are no absolutely "authoritative sources", there are no absolute experts, there are no enlightened or superior humans who we all must unquestionably follow, etc.  I am sorry for people who believe otherwise, and most people do, as does Ramin Mazaheri, an Iranian-American. I will try to explain why.

First off, I will try to explain why the people did not turn against the Muslim hierarchy in Iran as they did in other places like Russia against the Orthodox Church after the 1917 Revolution, in Spain against the Catholic Church in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-'38, etc; and why the  people supported the Catholic church in various places in Latin America starting in the 1950s during the Liberation Theology Movement and its activist expression in Christian base communities, reached its apogee in the 1970s-'80s, and to a diminishing extent since. However, the Vatican barely tolerated this support even though it was so popular throughout Latin America. There is a very simple explanation for this. The people supported their religious organizations when the latter supported them instead of the regime in power which typically occurs. 

On my trips to Nicaragua in the 1980s after the Sandinista Revolution I witnessed this firsthand. I met many people affiliated with the Maryknoll order (of the Catholic Church) who performed very important roles in the Nicaraguan government and supporting agencies, particularly in education and social services.

In class-ruled societies that have existed during the last 10,000 years (period of civilization) of the nearly 200,000 years of the existence of humans, most people are indoctrinated to obey, and have faith in, authority figures. All ruling classes (theocracies, military chieftains, feudal rulers, and capitalists), once they take power, realize the necessity of accomplishing this in order to secure their rule. Ruling classes have always immediately recognized that using force to intimidate people into following their exploitative rule is impractical. Thus, an authoritarian orientation among civilized people has always been the case. This simply means that humans since civilization and class rule have always looked to authorities for guidance on what to believe, how to ascertain truth, and from whom to acquire this truth. 

Nowadays, the ruling capitalist class culture endows mostly teachers, police, judges and courts, experts, corporate media talking heads, "authoritative sources", church authorities (priests, mullahs, rabbis, etc), etc, with special knowledge about reality. All the latter people are, in turn, supported by ruling capitalist classes. Likewise, capitalists punish any of their appointed authorities if their activities counter the interests of the ruling class. People like Ray Bonner, Phil Donahue, Dan Rather, Jesse Ventura, and many whistleblowers can testify to this.

The Age of Enlightenment (largely in the 18th century) had temporarily challenged these authoritarian notions with its emphasis on seeking truth through reason and evidence, and above all, science with its rigorous methods of obtaining truth. This resulted in the explosive growth of all knowledge about our physical reality ranging from nuclear physics to the farthest reaches of the universe. Soon we humans were able to harness energy to drive machines to make our lives much less burdened by drudgery. 

However, this explosive period of knowledge was nipped in the bud by the rise of capitalist classes who saw the wondrous potential that all this knowledge could bring them if the energy, machines, the products of the latter, money, and even knowledge itself could be "owned" by them. The capitalist classes recruited workers and peasants with deceptive promises that they would enjoy "democracy" (read, for example, the "Declaration of Independence") if they joined them to overthrow the rule of the monarchy and aristocracy whose rule was based on their control over land and its inhabitants. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Although ordinary working people were freed from feudal authorities, they soon found themselves at the mercy of their capitalist bosses.

Today all this "enlightenment stuff" is largely forgotten. People are taught to obey, consume, and work hard for their bosses. Oh sure, a small minority of them are allowed to receive advanced training in technology so that capitalists can own and profit from the products of this technology. Still, these scientists and technologists are thoroughly indoctrinated in the virtues of living in capitalist societies. They are induced to identify with capitalist interests (profit and power) by offering them a comfortable life style, many extra privileges that are denied to ordinary workers, and opportunities to associate often with the ruling capitalist class.

The Right Returns to the Religion Well

Click here to access article by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship from ConsortiumNews. 

The authors comment on the significance of a new museum just blocks away from the nation's capitol and called the "Museum of the Bible", sponsored by the rich right-wing of the ruling class. This may be another indication of the desperation of the ruling class that presides over the killing machine of the US-led Empire.

As the old joke goes, this is what God would do if He had money.

To be fair, by most accounts, the museum is well designed and executed, high-tech and state-of-the-art. Philip Kennicott, art and architecture critic for The Washington Post, wrote, “What it does well, it does as well or better than any museum in the country,” but added:

“There… is a lot of slippage between [the museum’s] claims that the Bible is enormously influential (which is indisputable) and that the stories it tells are fundamentally true (a claim disputed not just by atheists, agnostics, secular scholars and scientists, but also by billions of adherents of the world’s other religions). Every resource of museum design and careful argumentation has been mustered to sweep up these unrelated ideas in one, big, overwhelming package.”

What has many observers far more concerned are connections among the new attraction’s principal funders and the right wing. Here its mission becomes suspect, more political than religious, although with the right wing, it is always difficult to separate the two, each possessing a will to dominate. 

Today's recommended articles (11/4/2017)

by Ron Horn

•  The Truth About Radical Islam by Tony Cartalucci (a best post) from New Eastern Outlook

•  US Climate Assessment Exposes ‘Simply Terrifying’ Recklessness Of Trump by Jon Queally from Mint Press News.

• A Currency War Will Escalate as China’s ‘Petro-Yuan’ Is Set to Challenge the U.S. Military-Backed ‘Petro-Dollar’ by Timothy Alexander Guzman from Global Research

Then there are two posts by The Saker featuring Russian TV programs (here and here) which lampoons the current political scene in the US. Although the guests on these TV programs entertained the Russian audience with hilarious stories about their experiences with US corporate media and US authorities, I, as an American, felt embarrassment and deep disgust for my country. Thus, I didn't listen to much of the second post.

Washington Behind the Mirror

Click here to access article by Gordon Duff from New Eastern Outlook.

Duff attempts, and I believe largely succeeds, to bring us his assessment of the disturbing realities behind the mirror of fake corporate media reports. It seems that the crazies, the militarists, Christian fundamentalists (the Taliban and ISIS of America), Ziocons, and literally old Cold warriors are now at the helm of the nuclear weapons loaded, US-led Empire's ship of state. It might be a good time to re-view the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove.

Trump's political philosophy seems only guided by racism as revealed in his many vigorous attempts to roll-back any actions associated with the previous Obama administration (Affordable Care Act, Iran, Cuba). Otherwise he appears to be leaving policies regarding foreign affairs mostly to Pentagon generals except where his financial deals might be affected. It's no wonder that the atomic clock has been moved closer to midnight--the closest it has been since 1953 when...

Over the opposition of many nuclear scientists, the United States [the ruling class] decides to pursue the hydrogen bomb, a weapon far more powerful than any atomic bomb. In October 1952, the United States tests its first thermonuclear device, obliterating a Pacific Ocean islet in the process. Nine months later, the Soviets test an H-bomb of their own.

Except for his apparent racism, Trump's policies are understandable for someone of his limited experience: only as a real estate tycoon who has never held any elected public office and is ignorant of foreign affairs. But then, what choice did Americans really have in the last "democratic" election? Hillary, the mad-dog war monger, Clinton?

Trump’s New World Order

Click here if you wish to access the 21:34m video directly from The Analyst Report. 

I listened to this yesterday shortly after my posting deadline; and although I've posted similar material, I think it is so well done that I am posting it today. The unnamed excellent narrator begins by citing the manipulation of social identity issues.

Christians in Syria: “Help us pull our country back from the brink of the abyss”

Click here to access article by Alessandra Nucci from The Catholic World Report.

Catholics all over Syria are pleading with all who will listen about the horrors of their war being perpetrated by outside forces. For example:

In an interview with Catholic bulletin La Bussola Quotidiana, Father Mtanios Haddad, Melkite Patriarchal Representative to the Holy See and rector of the Basilica of Saint Mary in Cosmedin in Rome, pointed out that: “In Syria there are 18 Christian families, between Catholics, Orthodox, Catholic Armenians, Orthodox Armenians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Melkites…a mosaic that has always been in harmony with our Muslim cousins. The coexistence among religions was guaranteed for almost half a century by the government of the secular Baath party. In the Baath period we no longer had to indicate our religion on our ID cards. We were all Syrian citizens with equal rights, whatever our religion. Education was free for Christians and Muslims [including women] without distinction.”

He continued: 

This war has made us Christians the target of a fanatical Islam which has been literally imported from abroad.

 ....

Just stop selling arms to the terrorists, don’t let the terrorists come into Syria, it would cost you less. And it’s useless to lament the lack of food, milk for the children, and medicine: all you need to do is, rather, do away with the embargo.

Three things are needful: stopping the trade of arms from America (destined to the terrorists) closing Saudi Arabia’s wallet (which funds the terrorists) and closing the frontier with Turkey (through which come the terrorists).

Meanwhile in a report from one of the two prime media sources for the US-led Empire, the authors report that the CIA will continue to send heavy weapons to the "CIA-back rebels".

Hillary Clinton Is Spreading Islamist Extremism, Hillary’s Saudi Sponsors Support Terrorism

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from Global Research (Canada).

...the West embarked on a brutal, Machiavellian path: it decided to destroy socialist Islam – that (historically) moderate, compassionate and progressive religion. It smashed once secular Egypt; it overthrew the government in socialist Iran and then in near-Communist Indonesia, implanting in all these places horrifically degenerate and fully outdated religious concepts. It used extremists to destroy healthy patriotism and socialism. Like the Brits in the 19th Century..., the West embraced Wahhabi teaching, because it was able to guarantee full obedience, dictatorial (pro-Western) governance and oppressive feudalism.

We love to talk of terror – but after the Munich shooting, this hypocritical catch-all term has finally caught us out

Click here to access article by Robert Fisk of the Independent (Britain).

It all comes down to the same thing in the end. If Muslims attack us, they are terrorists. If non-Muslims attack us, they are shooters. If Muslims attack other Muslims, they are attackers.

This outstanding, long-time journalist correctly identifies inconsistencies with Western reporting of violent incidents, but he never speculates as to why different groups of people receive different coverage from Western media. It seems obvious to me. 

There is a political agenda, likely inspired by Zionists in the US-led Empire, to separate Muslims from the rest of humanity as evil-doers, or targets of hate and fear in order to divert attention away from the real evil-doers who are promoting endless wars and exploitation on behalf of financial and corporate based ruling classes aligned with the Empire. 

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.

Which came first, the prayer or the bomb?

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

The poem, which is much like the "chicken and egg" dilemma, attempts to answer another quandary about whether prayer (or one's religion) or the bomb came first. It begins this way:

My God is bigger than your God
My weapons are bigger than your weapons
Because my God is bigger than your God

Trump Supporters Disappointed He Only Wants to Ban One Religion

Click here to access article by Andy Borowitz from The New Yorker. (satire)

In conversations with likely Trump voters across the country, reactions ranged from disenchantment to a sharp sense of betrayal as supporters tried to make sense of his decision to ban members of only one faith.

America reacts to the Planned Parenthood attack

Click here to access article by Jen Sorensen from her website.

Video: Interview with ISIL members captured by YPG

Click here to access article from OffGuardian. 

This 7:08 video features some very interesting interviews. Suggest reading the comments following it. It looks very authentic. The only problem I have with it is that the Jewish interrogator seems to suggest that Jews are victims of ISIS. I remember many other reports that indicated Israelis were providing medical assistance to wounded ISIL soldiers, furnishing the latter with intelligence by Mossad, and other types of support (see this, this, this, and this).

America's Unofficial Religion - The War on an Idea

The Real News produced the video below which provides us within 29:10m an excellent history of the war that US capitalists have waged in all their ideological institutions against anyone arguing the notion of public ownership and control of the economy. At the same time they have essentially elevated the economic system of capitalism to that of a religion. Those who question or dissent from this religion are subject to many forms of "excommunication" such as ridicule, ostracism, unemployment, poverty, and killing if necessary.

(On a personal note, as an activist in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and 70s, I knew of Richard Becker, a leader of a leftist party, who spoke at many rallies. Brian Becker, who recounts a lot of socialist history in the video, looks astonishingly identical to him.)

I disagree with Brian Becker with respect to his portrayal of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party's campaign. Our ruling class is simply using Sanders to continue their re-definition of "socialism" as "social democracy" (capitalism with significant welfare and public spending programs)--which they can barely tolerate--in order to divert people's attention away from public ownership and control of the economy. In the context of electoral campaigns they often do this to bring unwitting dissenters and activists, who have difficulty with harsh austerity policies, back into supporting the Democratic Party and its candidates. 

Our ruling capitalist directors have so successfully managed to conflate socialism with the nice sounding label of "social democracy" that many Americans today confuse social democracy with socialism. Historically I think this began in the 1930s when Norman Thomas was a perennial candidate of the Socialist Party of America which by the 1930s, due to issues related to the Soviet revolution of 1917, had become largely transformed from a radical anti-capitalist party to a social democratic type of party. Thomas collaborated with, and supported, FDR's attempts to introduce a variety of social welfare and public spending programs.