Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, May 26, 2021

• Lockdowns Need to Be Intellectually Discredited Once and For All by Ethan Yang from American Institute for Economic Research. 

• 💥The Cover-Up Continues: The Truth About Bill Gates, Microsoft, and Jeffrey Epstein by Whitney Webb from her weblog Unlimited Hangout.  This is a best post because it is an excellent example of independent investigative journalism.
  

• Transcript – Guns and Butter Interview with Bonnie Faulkner March 8, 2021 [posted on 5/18/21] from Wrench in Gears. (Note: Notice the link to the actual interview broadcast on WBAI in New York. Also, during the interview Faulkner asks a key question after she introduces the question: "I was taught that one of the main [characteristics of] capitalism is that it must grow or expand. You have written that 'in order for capitalism to continue on a beautiful planet of finite resources, the plan is to shift growth to digital realms' which is what you’ve been discussing. How is virtual capitalism going to piggyback on real-world capitalism?") [my insertion] 

• A People’s Guide to the War Industry -2: Profits & Deception by Christian Sorensen from Consortium News.
  

• America’s Chief Exports Are Marvel Movies And Human Suffering: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix by Australian Caitlin Johnstone and her American husband providing the narration of this article.
  

• Biden Doesn’t Want Rules and Order Everywhere by Brian Cloughley from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

Rejection of a resolution calling for “respect for international humanitarian law” is not consistent with Washington’s intention to abide by the “rules-based international order” which is apparently the solution to all the world’s problems — providing the rules are not applied to Israel.

• CrossTalk: Heavy hand of tech from RT's channel of YouTube (24:28m).

Has Big Tech poisoned our politics or has it merely revealed deep social and political divisions? With each passing day making that determination becomes more and more difficult. Those who have the power to control our social interactions define what we understand to be reality. This is simply tyrannical.

CrossTalking with Ron Placone and Suzie Dawson.

 

My reaction: Of course Big Tech is controlled by the ruling capitalist class! It is another weapon in their vast arsenal that is aimed at all those that are not on board with the agendas and the interests of the ruling class.

• The Nazi Past of US Geopolitics by Thomas Klikauer and Norman Simms from CounterPunch. My commentary follows: 

This short history does not reveal the history of collusion by the Western capitalist ruling classes with German Nazis to crush the anti-capitalist Soviet Union and to rid the world of any kind of socialism that threatens the rule of capitalists. After WWII this history of their past collusion with Nazis has been rewritten to eliminate nearly all references to true history. This was especially true of most giant corporations like the Ford Company, IT&T, General Motors, etc. who kept their German industries running throughout WWII. 

 

Early in the war, conspirators, mostly in the State Department, saw the opportunity to construct another empire out of the remnants of the former British Empire with the intact industry and powerful military forces of the USA. (This was all laid out in earlier posts: here, here, and here.) But present generations know none of this history because it has been scrubbed from history books by historians appointed by the governors of their new empire, the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire (Israel and the right-wing power of Zionist finance were added later).

 

Today we see the current reactionary forces at work in the Empire's capitalist ruling classes to rid themselves of the burden of supporting poor people by eliminating "useless eaters" to lessen the threat climate destabilization confronting them so they can resume business as usual. Like I wrote in a commentary on 2/7/2021:

 

... this is a dangerous thought. Imagine that our masters in the ruling class have in their deluded thinking reached a conclusion that in order to save themselves [as their capitalist system] they must get rid of us untermenschen? They might in this belief decide that we ordinary humans are "useless eaters" and expendable, or worse yet like "communists" or anti-capitalists--class enemies, and kill us all in order to save themselves from the climate crisis, which they have caused, and they know is coming sooner or later. Perhaps the Great Reset is one such delusion. [my present insertion]

 

Our masters are presently busy trying to eliminate labor laws that guarantee workers' rights using the excuse of protecting the health of workers based on recommendations from CDC and OSHA, and the incessant propaganda about their contrived "pandemic". They are busy creating a two-tier society in which "good Germans" are extended all kinds of privileges based on their good behavior and the rest of us are denied travel and access to many services. 

• The First World War, Cecile Rhodes and “Conspiracy Facts” by David William Pear from Global Research. (Note: Another real history lesson.)
  

• Greetings from “New Normal” Germany! by CJ Hopkins. an American playwright and political satirist, who currently lives in Germany. He is mostly serious in this post, and describes the current living conditions of the German "new normal"  which is currently threatening to come to the USA.
  

Last week, here in “New Normal” Germany, the government (which, it goes without saying, bears no resemblance to the Nazi regime, or any other totalitarian regime) implemented a social-segregation system that bans anyone who refuses to publicly conform to the official “New Normal” ideology from participating in German society. From now on, only those who have an official “vaccination pass” or proof of a negative PCR test are allowed to sit down and eat at restaurants, shop at “non-essential” stores, or go to bars, or the cinema, or wherever. 

• Bernie Coddles Biden Instead Of Pushing Him featuring comedian Jimmy Dore from his YouTube channel. This time he returns to his normal comedic political satire, and he uses it to satirize Sen. Bernie Sanders. 

• How a fascist party brought into Israel’s parliament by Netanyahu helped him start the war he wanted by David Sheen from The Grayzone.

• Washington's, Not Myanmar's "National Unity Government" by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. 
  

• Douma: Three Years On How: independent media shot down the false “chemical attack” narrative by Eva Bartlett, Canada's outstanding independent journalist, from Off-Guardian.
  

•  Scientists Sound Alarm: Unprecedented Mercury Accumulation in Pacific Ocean Trenches by Aarhus University from SciTechDaily.

• Science Update: Arctic Summit 2021 featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist who has for many years focused on the climate crisis, and from his YouTube channel (09:56m).

• 84% of US West plunged into dangerous drought featuring Lori Harfenist using RT's channel to podcast this report.

The entire western half of the United States, from the Pacific Coast, across the great basin and the desert of the southwest, up through the rockies to the northern plains, is currently being ravaged by a drought so bad that many are now calling it a megadrought, the worst one the country has seen in 1200 years.

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, May 11, 2021

• An army of Big Biotech companies is using psych tactics to ‘create vaccine demand’ by Celeste McGovern from Life Site.
  

• Melinda Gates Was Concerned About Her Husband’s Relationship With Jeffrey Epstein, WSJ Reveals by Arjun Walia originally from the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall) but reported on Collective Evolution. 

• At $49.1 Trillion, the U.S. Stock Market Is Larger than the Combined GDP of the U.S., China, Japan and Germany by Pam & Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. My reaction: I don't advise you to waste your time communicating with your "Senators and House Reps" that the Martens do in their last paragraph.
  

• Panel: Why Russia fears another Nazi attack featuring Rick Sanchez of RT asking questions of two Russian experts regarding Russia's celebration of the victory over Nazi Germany. My reaction: They make the point, which I often make, that history of WWII has been largely rewritten for the people located in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Could it be that the Russian people fear another attack by NATO fascist forces that are amassed near the border with Russia?

• Keep Weapons Out of Space — ‘The New War-Fighting Domain’ by Brian Cloughley from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: Cloughley cites a 1967 agreement to keep weapons out of space signed by all leading nations, but provides evidence that since 1982 US presidents and their military keeps developing space weapons. I suggest you ask American Indians if the USA abides by (def.) their agreements.

• Escalation In Palestine by Bernhard, a German independent blogger, from his weblog Moon of Alabama. My reaction: There have been many reports of tensions heating up between the Israeli government and the Palestinians and antagonistic Arabs in the region. I wonder what is going on.

• Meet the Neo-Nazi Advising Colombian Police on How to Break the National Strike by Dan Cohen from Mint News Press.

The U.S. gave these helicopters, free of charge, to Colombia as part of what’s known as Plan Colombia – a massive military aid package that was ostensibly about fighting drug traffickers, but was really about defeating the leftist FARC counterinsurgency and punishing their base of support among peasants in rural areas.

In 2016, the FARC and government made a peace deal, so aside from a few holdouts, the FARC doesn’t exist.

Meanwhile, there’s more cocaine coming out of Colombia than ever, and the international drug cartels are more powerful than ever.

  

My reaction: Columbia is an integral part of Plan Columbia which was designed to control Venezuela if not all of South America for the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. (See this and this.) I remember in the late 1980s attending in Oregon a report from an independent journalist who spoke of the many atrocities against labor leaders which was ignored by the Colombian government, and the reality of this was well hidden by US corporate media.

• World’s winds intensifying at shocking pace by "Lori" from The Resident channel on RT.
  

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 for Sunday, April 25, 2021

• 7 Reasons Why a Vaccine Passport (Pass, Certificate or Whatever They Want to Call It) Should Give Us Pause for Thought by Nick Corbishley from Naked Capitalism.

• Alison Morrow Interview – MSM COVID Blind Spots, Willful Misinformation Or Manufacturing Consent? from The Last American Vagabond featuring Ryan Cristián interviewing Morrow (1:03:52) who worked in MSM and quit them after realizing that they were engaged in propaganda. (Note: Cristián and Morrow focus much of their discussion on why people engage in propaganda.) My reaction: Sociopathic people will rationalize all their cooperative efforts with propagandists because they want to sustain careers to furnish their families with all the goodies they want above all other considerations. I refer to it as the Thatcher principle of amorality: "there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals and their families".
  

• Why The Main Argument Against Withdrawing US Troops Is Bogus by Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian independent blogger from her weblog. (Note: This article includes narration and transcript of her article.)

• Israel No Longer Has A ‘Deterrence Capacity’ And Its Attempts To Revive It May Prove Too Dangerous by Robert Inlakesh from The Last American Vagabond.
  

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, March 2, 2021

• Nudge Strategies: Persuasive Vaccine Messages featuring Dave Cullen, an Irishman, from his Bitchute channel Computing Forever in a 6:57m video.

• After Years of Propaganda, American Views of Russia and China Hit Historic Lows by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News (based in Minneapolis). My reaction: I'm amazed at the apparent effectiveness of the ruling class's propaganda.

• The United States of (Capitalist) Misery by Philip Roddis, a Brit, from his weblog Steel City Scribblings.
  

• Real Reason CORNEL WEST Denied Tenure From Harvard. This post features Jimmy Dore and Max Blumenthal discussing (in a 20:19m video) the denial of tenure and other matters related to the "antisemitism" smear that Zionist figures use to attack anyone who criticizes Israeli discriminatory policies. You should start the video at 2:15m if you have already seen the prior video featuring Cornel West on the Jimmy Dore channel of YouTube.

• Bernays and Propaganda – The Transition to Education and Commerce – Part 4 by Larry Romanoff from "The Saker" weblog. 

By the early 1900s, Lippman and Bernays had learned from experience the methods of creating an extensive, false, and emotionally-provocative imagery and to use this fabricated mythology to control the perceptions and manipulate the opinions and behavior of the population of an entire nation. It had first been done for political purposes during wartime, to create immense racial hatred and push a nation into war, but was clearly just as applicable to political and commercial ambitions. At the same time, the wealthy elite of the nation created the higher echelons of an American educational system that would use essentially the same principles to entrench themselves in perpetuity by maintaining the bewildered herd as a kind of feudal colony of impoverished consumers. Those controlling the banks and large corporations were not content to stop with the educational system when they realised the broader possibilities of influencing the population through a nationwide scale of propaganda disguised as advertising, which led in turn to the creation and rapid development of the American advertising industry based almost entirely on the principles Lippman and Bernays identified. We then had the media, beginning with print and radio but rapidly including the movies and then television, being the vehicles through which this grand plan of population control would be executed.

• The ‘Cancel Culture’ phenomenon: kind of hate-hush all over the world by Ghassan and Intibah Kadi from "The Saker" weblog. 

• War Mongering for Artificial Intelligence by Binoy Kampmark from Off-Guardian.
  

• Putin Laid it All Out: “The So-called Policy of Containing Russia” by Pepe Escobar from Global Research.

• The Significance of China Surpassing US as EU’s Top Trade Partner by Brian Berletic from New Eastern Outlook.
  

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

• The Western Propaganda War on Myanmar by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. (Note: Berletic, to his astonishment, reveals that the Thai government is funding pro-NATO propaganda. This post added to yesterday's Dore interview with Blumenthal of The Grayzone suggests that Western-based international news agencies are weapons used by Western governments' intelligence agencies to engage in psychological warfare in various countries.) My commentary follows: 

There are many indications that the CIA, NSA, etc. are engaging in influencing the minds of Americans within this country, and that news reporting is transformed into propaganda to promote capitalist ruling class interests here and abroad. I don't think it is an exaggeration to state that we in America, and many other places in the world, are living in a kind of "Truman Show", a programmed reality that was produced by our masters in the capitalist ruling class. Or, using the concept of Caitlin Johnstone, we are living in a "narrative matrix" to suggest that the ruling class's control of all ideological institutions is producing a fake reality for most of us. They do this by using fake news and propaganda, via their ownership and control of media corporations, that they spread throughout all the other ideological institutions (education, entertainment, etc.) in order to control people's minds, especially within the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. 

 

This practice is the essence of neo-fascism, an updated version of old-fashioned fascism, now used by our contemporary masters in the ruling class in contrast to the classic fascism of German and Italian history (reliance on police terror). To be sure, the latter used elements of fake news and propaganda, but they relied on hard fascist methods because of the underdevelopment of propaganda during their rule. However, whenever the methods of neofascism fail, our contemporary masters don't hesitate to use the police and military forces to put down opposition.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, February 12, 2020

• Chris Matthews Fears Execution Under Bernie Presidency from The Jimmy Dore Show (via YouTube). (Note: A little humor to sweeten the bad news for you.)

• Guest post: The irreversible emissions of a permafrost ‘tipping point’ by Dr Christina Schädel from Carbon Brief.

• OK, Doomers! The Climate Generation Has Arrived by Sarah Jaquette Ray from Edge Effects. 

• IMF and World Bank complicit in ‘austerity as new normal’, despite availability of alternatives from Bretton Woods Project.

• Just Some Illustrations I’ve Done Lately by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 

• Syria imposes the Astana deal by force, as Turkish-Russian tensions rise by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog. (Thank your god for this excellent journalist! We would never understand the Mid-East as well without his reports.)

• Scott Ritter explains Syria war WMD lies from the Rick Sanchez Show on RT.

• The Survival of the ILWU at Stake! by Jack Heyman from CounterPunch. 

This article, while focusing on the latest labor union's fight for survival, only touches on the carefully hidden class war that has been going in the USA since its founding by mostly land speculators and slaveholders like George Washington and their ruling class collaborators like Alexander Hamilton. But you, as a US citizen would know nothing about their history from US schools or coverage by media corporations. They even rewrite history to portray them reverently as "Founding Fathers". (Hamilton was celebrated recently in the Broadway play named "Hamilton".)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two posts by Stephen Gowans that I especially recommend today: Thursday, January 2, 2020

I consider Gowans to be one of a handful of top geopolitical analysts in today's world. Here are two very recent posts by him:

• Washington’s Xinjiang smear

• Kim Jong Un: Until the US shows it’s interested in peace, North Korea will continue to build strategic weapons

Posts I especially recommend to you today: Thursday, October 24, 2019

• Twitter Editor Exposed As Military PsyOps Officer from The Jimmy Dore Show. (Note: This post and the following post are to lend some humor to today's awful news.)

• Women Are CEO’s Of Top Weapons Manufactures from The Jimmy Dore Show. (Note: We learn contrary to the propaganda in support of the social identity theme in order to distract angry dissenters that women are CEOs of America's top weapons corporations. I presume this is equal opportunity to cash in on war crimes.)

• Assange’s Extradition Is a Case About the Crimes of Empire by Nozomi Hayase from Antiwar. 

• Global Warming Is Not Part of Natural Climate Variability by Mark Fischetti from Scientific American.

• Video: Dorian’s Deadly Stall – How Climate Change is Weaponizing Hurricanes by "greenman3610" from Skeptical Science. 

• What’s Really Happening in Lebanon? by Laith Marouf from BS News (Britain).

• Chile: “This is Not About 30 Pesos but 30 Years of Abuses” by Sergio Pintado from Internationalist 360°. 

• THE ANGRY ARAB: Trump & the Turkish Invasion of Northern Syria by As`ad AbuKhalil from Consortium News.

I especially recommend these posts for Friday, October 4, 2019

• Trumpenstein Must Be Destroyed! by master satirist CJ Hopkins from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc. (Note: I start off with his political satire the title of which is a play on the Frankenstein monster theme. This is the spoonful of sugar (humor) that helps the medicine (the more serious issues) go down.)

• Newly-Declassified U.S. Government Documents: The West Supported the Creation of ISIS by the blogger at Washington's Blog.

• US Task Force Smoking Gun smuggles weapons to Syria: Serbia files (part 2) by Dilyana Gaytandzhieva from Arms Watch. 

• Elite UK military unit secretly trained by leftist regime-change advocate Gilbert Achcar and other academics by Ben Norton from The Grayzone.

Articles I especially recommend for today: Tuesday, September 24, 2019

• What Climate Activists Still Haven’t Learned by Eric Schechter from The Greanville Post.

• Explainer: How climate change is accelerating sea level rise by Zeke Hausfather from Carbon Brief.

• Voices from the Seattle Global Climate Strike by Andy Freeman from Liberation.

• What Iran and the US offer their allies: Tehran’s multiple messages by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog. 

• US Task Force Smoking Gun smuggles weapons to Syria: Serbia files by Dilyana Gaytandzhieva from BSNews (Britain).

Articles I recommend for Friday, August 30, 2019

• Making a Killing From Killing by Paul Atwood from CounterPunch.

• The Bizarre Action in U.S. Treasuries Is Linked to the U.S. National Debt and the Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• The Justice Department Has Had the Epstein Case Since July 2006 – It’s Time to Arrest Accomplices by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

• Another Syrian Victory – and West’s Telling Silence by an editor of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Give Me Suggestions On How To Level Up My Fight by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

US is about to sanction the world if they don't stop purchasing Russian arms

Click here to access article by Andrew Korybko from InfoRos (Russia).

This American geopolitical analyst based in Moscow examines the latest economic warfare launched by the US administration to counter the influence of the Russians and Chinese who wish to break the dominance of power in the hands of ruling class capitalists and their US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. He focuses on the purchase of weapons in this geopolitical struggle.

... military relationships aren't the same as most trading ones where the customer simply purchases a product and that's usually the end of the exchange. Rather, they usually imply long-term partnerships where the seller agrees to maintain the military wares for an agreed-upon length of time and train the end user in how to properly operate them, which lays the basis for more comprehensive and strategic relations between the two parties as a result of these trustful ties.

There are also billions of dollars to be made these deals too, to say nothing of any others that result from this exercise of "military diplomacy". In addition, countries that have established these close "deep state" relations with Russia and China are generally more aligned with those two multipolar Great Powers and not as easily manipulated by the US, which is of course concerning from an American standpoint.

Articles recommended for Saturday, October 6, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

Of a Type Developed by Liars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to access article by Peter Lee from Newsbud. 

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

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

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

The failure of the Soviet economy and the global domination of the petrodollar

Click here to access article by Tobias Pfennig posted on Defend Democracy Press. (Note: this post is marred somewhat by the failure to raise reference numbers in the text. Thus, your attention may be distracted by such text as this: "Additionally, Northern America together with Europe controlled 91 percent of the global export market share2." and this: "In 2013 Oil exports together with gas made up more than 68%3 of the whole exports from the Russian Federation." The post was from a "Text of a speech delivered at the International Conference on Alternatives to Financial Capitalism, held in Chisinau, Moldova 12-13 December 2017", and obviously the numbers should have been raised because they referred to documentation which was left out of this post.")

I think the author has a very good grasp of the potential, and actual use, of economic weapons that have been used by the US-led Empire over the decades since WWII. Because the lethal applications of these weapons are never felt among ordinary people in the countries affiliated with the Empire, they are an ideal weapon of choice against independent countries in order to extend the Empire's (the transnational capitalists affiliated with the Empire) dominance of the world. The imposition of the US dollar on the rest of the world remains a major battlefield, and the entrance on this battlefield by Russia and China (in collaboration with smaller nations) in opposition to the dominance of the Empire looks very promising for the end of Empire dominance.

“Diplomatic Flights used as Cover for Arms Trafficking to Terrorists” [Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva]

Click here to access article from FARS news agency in Iran. 

I've posted two previous articles regarding her claims which were mostly based on RT interviews with this Bulgarian journalist (see here and here) who has since been fired. Since then FARS news agency has followed up with this interview (in transcript form) of their own with Gaytandzhieva.

Dilyana Gaytandzhieva is a Bulgarian investigative journalist. In December 2016, she visited liberated neighborhoods of Aleppo where she found Bulgarian-made weapons inside underground warehouses belonging to terrorists. She felt suspicious and traced those weapons to its Bulgarian manufacturer realizing that they were legally exported to Saudi Arabia, which in turn supplied them to terrorists in Syria. As a result of further investigation she discovered that this was just a small part of a bigger international scheme.

FNA has conducted an interview with Dilyana Gaytandzhieva about the result of her investigation into the use of diplomatic flights for supplying weapons to terrorists.

Avoiding Nuclear War: Why Kim Jong-Un’s Strategy Makes Sense

Click here to access article by Federico Pieraccini from Strategic Culture Foundation. (My thanks go to Christopher P. in northwest Oregon for alerting me to this excellent article.)

There's method to Kim Jong-Un’s reported madness (in US corporate media). This is the thesis argued by the author that attempts to give a rational perspective from North Korea's point of view, and I think he is quite convincing. 

...the strategy of the Pyongyang is working: on the one hand, they are developing a nuclear weapon to deter external enemies; on the other, they are obligating the PRC to adopt a particularly hostile attitude towards South Korea’s deployment of THAAD. In this sense, the numerous economic actions of Beijing towards Seoul can be explained as a response to the deployment of the THAAD batteries. China is the main economic partner of South Korea, and this trade and tourism limitation is quite damaging to South Korea’s economy.

My only criticism is this statement referring to the THAD missiles the US has installed in South Korea: "As repeatedly explained, it is useless against North Korean rockets...." I am quite well-read (def.), but I often skip over technical details of weapons. Thus I was offended by this statement and the fact that he didn't bother with furnishing a link to support it. Here is such a link from a South Korean source.

US sent weapons to Syria through Ramstein military base - report

Click here to access article by Rebecca Staudenmaier from Deutsche Welle.

More news is leaking out regarding weapons supplied by the US Empire to their terrorist proxy forces in Syria--this time sourced from German newspapers.

Washington's air base in southwest Germany was used for a time to store and send weapons to Syrian rebels, according to a German news daily. If the report proves true, the US could have violated German law.

The US military has been using its massive air base in western Germany to arm rebel groups in Syria without Berlin's permission, according to a report from German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung published on Wednesday.