As someone [Lindorff] who studied modern Russian history, I found myself nonetheless being continually surprised as I read The Russian Peace Threat, by shocking new facts about this enduring US hostility that I had clearly not been fully aware of. For example, at the end of Chapter 10, writing about the launching of the Cold War by then Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Harry Truman as World War II was ending, Ridenour describes how Churchill proposed a plan to the US called “Operation Unthinkable.” This criminal nightmare vision had the combined forces of the US, Britain and Canada, along with some 100,000 rearmed Nazi troops, attacking the presumably exhausted and over-extended Soviet Red Army then still battling remnants of the Wehrmacht in eastern Germany.
With every war or tough western policy to defeat this “axis” using Saudi Arabian money and western intelligence services in the Levant and Iraq, this “axis” becomes stronger and increases the number of its supporters. Can the western warmongers finally learn that such a policy is, in fact, drastically weakening the West in the Middle East? I doubt it.Major Danny Sjursen:
Short-term thinking, expedience, and a lack of strategic caution (or direction) has led Washington to train, fund, and support group after group that, soon enough, turned its guns on American soldiers and civilians. It’s a long, sordid tale that stretches back decades -- and one that, unlike the individual instances of treachery that kill or maim American servicemen, receives next to no attention.
The simplest explanation for a positive climate feedback loop is this: The more something happens, the more it happens. One of the most well-known examples is the melting of sea ice in the Arctic during the summer, which is accelerating. As greater amounts of Arctic summer sea ice melt away, less sunlight is reflected back into space. Hence, more light is absorbed into the ocean, which warms it and causes more ice to melt, and on and on.And the scientists' explanations? Read the article.
... I realized that this is how the finest propaganda works. It splits people in two and works subtly. Emotionally you are pulled one way, and intellectually another, if you are thinking at all. There are certain connections you are not supposed to make or verbalize, when to oppose the powerful sway of the media’s emotional appeals is considered a betrayal of your humanity and certain victims, such as a cute orphan or acceptable victims, even when that doesn’t follow logically.
But in the Magic Theatre that is American life, false choices are the essence of the show. Democrats vs. Republicans, Clinton vs. Bush, Bush vs. Obama, Obama vs. Trump, liberals vs. conservatives, and on and on endlessly. It’s Dada, my friends, all theater. The next election will change everything, right? “The sun’ll come out/Tomorrow, So ya gotta hang on/‘Till tomorrow/ Come what may.”
For instance, the suicide note of Daniel Somers, an Iraq war veteran who took his own life at age 30, stated that his PTSD was largely the result of having been ordered to “participate in things” including “war crimes, crimes against humanity.” Somers noted that “though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply cannot come back from.”
Indeed, some of the atrocities that have been conducted by U.S. troops in Iraq include orders to slaughter all “military age men” in a given area, torturing detainees, raping children, massacring groups of civilians, and sodomizing prisoners with broom sticks.
Is the ruling capitalist class promoting the Democratic Socialists of America party as the new sheepherder, replacing Bernie Sanders, to lead American sheep into one of their political corrals? The author's report suggests so.
The New York Times promotes the DSA because, far from posing a threat to the capitalist system, the DSA is a principal political instrument for the Democratic Party to block and divert a leftward movement of workers and young people. Those looking for genuine socialism, including workers and young people who have joined the DSA, should be advised that such a program will not come out of the pages of the bourgeois press.
This short and to-the-point essay is right on the mark about some fundamental insights: reform doesn't work when a system is basically flawed; we humans have forgotten that we took a wrong turn some 10,000 years ago in tolerating dominant and self-centered sociopaths; as a consequence we can't, or refuse to, see the way out of our psychological box.
At the crux of the issue is a battle of authenticity versus falsehood, on a spectrum. With most of us sandwiched somewhere in between and WikiLeaks front and centre. Because WikiLeaks is the last available vestige of verifiable, unadulterated public truth.
That is why they are hated by those who fear the revelations WikiLeaks facilitates and why WikiLeaks’ public reputation is desecrated every day. It is why their every pillar of support is systematically undermined and why Julian Assange is being ever so slowly murdered in front of our eyes.
We, the people, are the last line of their defence. Part of protecting WikiLeaks – and ultimately ourselves – is to understand the relentless nature of the psyops employed against them; that the hardships inflicted upon them by the enemies of human progress are not just reputational or financial but physical; that for those waging this thankless war of truth on our behalf, this is a matter of life or death.
And that is why we must push back.
That is why we must tell the truth about them.
I bring up rape culture from time to time not just because it’s an inherently toxic dynamic which destroys lives and has impacted me personally, but because I see it as inseparable from the constant transgressions of powerful people who seek to undermine the sovereignty of entire populations and nations. I truly believe that if our culture had a better understanding of what sovereignty is and how it works, everyone from serial rapists to imperialists to mass media propagandists would lose the societal framework in which they operate.
Power, when you get right down to it, is ultimately about control.
Austrian researchers have bad news for those nations alarmed about climate change: the Arctic thaw means the chances that the world will exceed the global warming limit set by international agreement are high – and getting ever higher with every tiny shift in the planetary thermometer.
Warming in the Arctic is the fastest on the planet – and any warming will release ever more methane and other forms of stored carbon from the thawing permafrost.
I think the author is spot-on with his observation about Iran's exploiting the various factions of the Kurds as a weapon to undermine the US's use of the SDF (formerly the YPG, a Kurdish nationalist group that wanted their own territory inside Syria (and possibly joining the Iraqi Kurds). (By the way, the very name of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was instigated by a US Commander Raymond “Tony” Thomas of US Special Forces in Syria--see his remarks beginning at 25:10m in his talk at the Aspen Institute in July of 2017.)
Apart from building pressure on the US through a coordinated effort of Russia and Turkey, Iran can do other things as well. Not only can it exploit divisions among the Kurds, but also incite anti-American sentiments in the SDF-controlled areas and thus increase pressure on the US forces to leave the region, thus building an effective deterrent to the US plans of opening new fronts, particularly through Israel, against Iran in the Middle East.
While it is not at all clear that rising Fed interest rates will trigger a stock market crash in time for the November mid-term elections, the stage is clearly set for the Fed to put the US economy into a severe recession or depression by the time of the 2020 elections. That would finish the Trump presidency should the Powers That Be decide another option is more useful to their global power agenda.
“We won’t be able to call it a recession, it’s going to be worse than the Great Depression,” said Peter Schiff, fund manager who anticipated the 2007 sub-prime crash.
... as the social and political consequences of the crisis began to make themselves felt, and the postwar international order seemed to tremble on its foundations, the world’s leading central banks – adamant to save the skin of private financiers and avoid a repeat of the 1930s – responded with an unprecedented monetary experiment. Not only did they drop interest rates to historic lows, but they also embarked on an aggressive program of “quantitative easing” (QE) that would see the four biggest central banks pump the equivalent of $15 trillion in new money into the global financial system.
Instead of boosting productive activity, however, it soon became clear that this excess liquidity had unleashed a fresh wave of speculative investment.