The Global Power Elite: A Transnational Class

Click here if you wish to directly access this 13:10 video from The Real News Network in which author and researcher Peter Phillips is interviewed.

The author of a new book entitled Giants: The Global Power Elite has obviously done his "homework" and knows what he is talking about. He reports about how much of the world is directed by three private organizations: the Group of Thirty, the Trilateral Commission, and the Atlantic Council. The only thing that he not directly state, but implied with the fact that these organizations are based in the USA, is that they are the "hidden hand" behind the US-led Empire which has its own army called NATO and media (MSM). The Deep State refers to the "hidden hand" behind the US government. Thus, the Deep State exercises considerable influence over these three organizations. This is what George H.W. Bush was talking about when he referred to a "new world order" in 1991 during a speech when he also ordered an attack on Iraq. He meant a world under the control of the US Empire and the transnational capitalists.

This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.

When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.'s founders.

You simply must watch this video, after which you may want to buy the book.

Yellow vests and government disinformation —list of demands

Click here to access article from "THE BLOG OF GABAS / MEDIAPART. FR" and translated by Patrice Greanville from his website. 

In this latest news of the "yellow vests" they are now making demands on the French government. We now see our capitalist masters imposing austerity on working people in the various countries of the US-led Empire. They like to engage in economic warfare against other countries they don't like, but this is economic warfare directed against their own working people, and the people, particularly the French working people, have had enough.

There are some indications that the protest is spreading to other countries as reported by RT and George Galloway, a British member of parliament, in the following video:

Syria Sitrep - Army To Regain Northeastern Territory - Political Isolation Ends

Click here to access article by Bernhard from his blog Moon of Alabama. (Updated at 11:48 AM CT.)

I don't know where this German blogger gets his information from, but his information is very reliable. In this post he gives so much information regarding the fluid situation in Syria and in the area, and this information corresponds with other Middle East sources: Al-Masdar News, Al Jazeera, and Press TV.

I previously posted some other source in which it was reported that Trump was withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, but since I've learned that he is withdrawing only some of them, although a substantial number of them.

Recommended articles for Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Updated at 1:48 PM CT. Credit goes to an activist for alerting me to the post by the UN Human Rights commissioner. 

• Syrian government forces 'enter' Kurdish-controlled Manbij region from Al Jazeera. Be sure to watch the panel discussion at the end of the article.

• For What It’s Worth: The Yellow Vests and the Left by Jim Kavanaugh from The Greanville Post.

... the American mainstream media has avoided focusing on the Yellow Vest movement. The left, on the other hand, must be overjoyed, right?

Well, it’s more like: Comme-ci, comme ça.

Why? “Identity politics” is, of course, the term that immediately comes to mind, though that term oversimplifies, particularly regarding the French context. As C. J. Hopkins put it: “Nothing scares the Identity Politics Left quite like an actual working class uprising.” Scares and confuses.

• The United States refuse to fight for the transnational financiers by Thierry Meyssan from his blog Voltaire Network.

• Imagining Life After Capitalism -- Sasha Lilley of KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station radio station in Berkeley, California, interviews author Peter Frase regarding the issues in his book, Four Futures: Life After Capitalism Verso (2014). 

We humans have a future?

• UN Says Free Assange Without Extradition To The US by United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner posted on Popular Resistance.

Do Russiagate Promoters Prefer Impeaching Trump to Avoiding War With Russia?

Click here to access two audios posted on The Nation featuring Stephen F. Cohen, a longtime expert on Soviet-Russian affairs, together with John Batchelor on his radio show. The article below the two audio tapes summarize his views which he goes into detail on the show. I strongly recommend that you listen to the two audio presentations to see how he builds his argument that we are in mortal danger of WWIII.

I don't subscribe to many of the views presented by Cohen, but I respect his well-informed views on Soviet Union/Russia. Where I differ is that Cohen doesn't appear to understand that the post-WWII period has seen the rise of US-led capitalist Empire which is now in its fascist stage. This means that the core leadership (the Deep State--read my commentary here) of the transnational capitalist class that runs the Empire is now using their total control of corporate media to spread pure propaganda (ex: Russiagate) to pursue their agendas. 

I've been currently reading a book entitled The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton in which the author, Jefferson Morley, writes with reference to Cord Meyer who became a high level CIA agent:

In 1954, Allen Dulles persuaded him to take over the Agency's International Organizations division. In consultation with Angleton, Meyer orchestrated the Agency's covert funding of labor unions, newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and Hollywood movies.

The point being that this fascist core, being bent on world domination, were active as early as 1954 to construct their "Fourth (capitalist) Reich".

Members of the now powerful Deep State are now seeing their domination of the world severely threatened especially by the rise of Russia and China; but they are also threatened by financial crises and the unsustainability of their capitalist system due to its collision course with environmental concerns. As a result of these combined threats they are like a wounded predatory animal: they are becoming hyper-aggressive. This is what Cohen is concerned about. However, he doesn't see the history of the development of this predatory animal since WWII.

UK And US PSYOP Collusion [a must read!]

Click here to access article by Margaret Kimberley from the Black Agenda Report. (I can't thank an activist enough for alerting me to this article!) 

For more than two years the corporate media, elite think tanks, NATO leaders, and most Democratic Party politicians have insisted that Russia interferes in American and European elections. The charge doesn’t withstand scrutiny but the lies are repeated. There is proof that surveillance state meddling in the affairs of democratic nations is real, but Russia isn’t the culprit. It is the United Kingdom and the United States who lead in skullduggery and meddling with the rights they claim to uphold.

Thanks to the Anonymous hacker community the work of the Integrity Initiative  has been exposed to the public.

The Anonymous hacker community appears to be furnishing authentic information hacked from the British government front agency officially listed as a charity.

The Integrity Initiative is a British “charity” founded in 2015. Its mission is to “bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America.” That mission is suspect in and of itself, a phony trope meant to cover up its own imperialist wrong doing. The Integrity Initiative is an arm of the British government and has received more than $2 million in funding from the British Foreign Office and Defense department. It has also raised money from NATO, Facebook and rightwing foundations. 

The author seems to be incredibly naive when she makes this statement:

The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC haven’t covered this story.

These major news outlets, having been infiltrated and subverted by the Deep State long ago, are in on this project. Their executives may or may not know of the details, but they are fully cooperating in the deception of the people of the US-led Empire. (See this, this, this, and this -- a number of similar posts that I've collected over the past few years have been removed from the web.) That is precisely why many journalists that formerly worked for them or similar "news and opinion" organizations have left to go independent or have joined RT.

Recommended articles for Tuesday, December 25, 2018

• The Hypocrisy of Chomsky and the Imperialist Left on Syria, Rojava and Yemen posted on FRN by Jay Tharappel, who is a PhD Candidate at Sydney University. (I agree totally with the author.)

• Wake from the Nightmare or Eternal Sleep for Humanity by Frank Scott from Dissident Voice. 

• New Cold War & looming threats. John Pilger is interviewed by two members of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and posted on Frontline (India).

• "John Pilger special – A look back at 2018, and ahead to 2019." John Pilger is interviewed (the interview begins at 2:00m after a survey of the news) by Afshin Rattansi whose bio information shows that he has worked nearly everywhere. (I formerly watched his programs when I lived in Vancouver, BC from 2002-2006, and I thought he worked for CBC. Apparently all dissident media people end up on RT.)  

I found Pilger's observations regarding H.W. Bush, Bill Blum, and Donald Trump beginning at about 20:00m to the end to be particularly interesting.

 

Trump is leaving behind a trap for Russia, Turkey and Iran in Syria

Click here to access article by Kuwaiti independent journalist Elijah J Magnier from his blog.

The US executive order of withdrawal from Syria has been signed off on, indicating that President Trump is determined to recall the few thousands US troops in Syria back home. It is well known that regular troops are much more vulnerable during withdrawal operations than in combat or deployment positions. Accordingly, the withdrawal, which seems to be happening despite widespread scepticism in Syria and Iraq, will likely take less than the announced 100 days to complete. US military command keeps the dates secret to avoid casualties. Although the departure of the US is much welcomed by all parties in and around Syria – except for the Kurds – Trump is intentionally leaving behind a very chaotic situation in the Levant, and is setting a deadly trap for Russia in the first place, but also for Iran and Turkey.

Look at northern Syria near the border with Turkey. Manbij is in Aleppo (Halab) province, northeast of the city of Aleppo. Tal Abiad is directly north of the city of Ar Raqqa near border with Turkey. Deir-Ezzour = Dayr Az Zawr. Palmyra is located in south central Syria.

Recommended posts for Sunday, December 23, 2018

• John Pilger says Julian Assange is in 'very good spirits' after visit to embassy.

• Erdogan does not object to Damascus’s control over al-Hasaka: the Kurds choose between loyalty to Syria or defeat by Turkey by the Kurdish independent journalist Elijah J. Magnier. 

• The resignation of General Mattis and America’s crisis of class rule by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site. 

Endless War Has Been Normalized And Everyone Is Crazy

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog. 

After arguing that we are now in a state of endless war, she asks why and how this came about. But she only attributes this to our trusting childhood development being dependent on adult guidance. 

I have a much better explanation for the normalization of endless war. The ambitious false-flag project on 9/11 (see this and/or this for transcript) was vitally important for our Deep State masters in order to turn around our largely anti-imperialist attitudes prior to this event. They succeeded marvelously to turn adults living in the Empire into raving enthusiasts for striking anybody anywhere that could be identified by our masters as "terrorists" or supporting terrorism. Having controlled what adults thought about this event, they knew that the adults would tell their children the same fabricated, false-flag type of story.

No matter how it appears, Trump isn’t getting out of Syria and Afghanistan

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left. (Bloggers note: I added Bernhard to the list of top geopolitical analysts at 8:27 AM CT on 12/25/2018.)

I regard Stephen Gowans (along with Pepe Escobar, Tony Cartalucci, and Bernhard of Moon of Alabama) as one of the top geopolitical analysts in the world.

Gowans argues, with considerable supporting documentation, that Trump has not changed the fundamental policies of the Empire's imperialist policies, but there is a change in methods to finance foreign military adventure. True to the views which Trump as consistently argued in the past, he wants our allies to bear more of the cost of maintaining these foreign adventures. Gowans further argues that Mattis's resignation was motivated by the opposite view: that the USA must maintain its predominate role. It is a debate between imperialist policies, not imperialism itself. Thus, there is no fundamental shift in the Empire's funding of imperialism. (However, I doubt that USA's allies will be willing to replace US troops in eastern Syria.)

I think that the Mattis camp is right in their opinion that the Trump decision to cut back on the cost to the USA will eventually lead to the weakening of the Empire's control of the world. But Trump is simply recognizing reality: the USA simply can't afford to supply troops and other financing of these adventures any longer. We are too broke to do this. 

Trump's decision puts another marker on the beginning of the end of the US Empire. To be sure, the capitalist ruling classes of the US's subordinate allies will pick up the military and financial burden because they have no other choice. They too have financial problems of their own, and cannot much longer fund such adventures. So, I view Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan in order to shift more of the burden on their partners-in-crime to maintain the Empire as a positive sign in the long run.

Julian Assange controversy

by Ron Horn.

I have been mystified by the lack of reporting regarding the plight of Julian Assange in left-wing British websites. I have emailed many of these website badgering and shaming them in order to get some kind of response. To date I have received none, and my patience is running out. So, I decided to do a little research. What follows is what I've gathered in about three hours time.

Last night I spent a frustrating one hour listening to the discussion of the streamed online broadcast of "United in solidarity for Julian Assange" on their website. I found the experience frustrating because the discussion was mostly focused on the legal aspects of his situation which I don't believe merit much attention given the fact that our fascist ruling classes have so little respect for legal procedures. 

Somehow my attention wandered to George Galloway, the outspoken member of the British parliament. He tells it like it is to audiences who often do not want to hear the truth. I discovered via YouTube an excerpt of a talk he made in 2012 in defense of Assange. He was speaking at the Oxford Union to a gathering of rich, ruling class brats. One statement he made at 6:20m into the talk in which he stated "I've never met Julian Assange. I'm told he is a weird fellow." drew my undivided attention. Unfortunately, his remarks were interrupted by a shallow ruling class kid who took this statement to mean that he was making a slur against gay people. However, this statement of his was full of implications that maybe Assange's personal behavior was looked on with disapproval in Britain, and this was the reason why he lacked support. 

This morning I have done further online research to shed light on these implications. Of course, I ran into a number of biased reports against him, but two sources stood out as being reasonably objective: one from the British New Statesman entitled "Jemima Khan on Julian Assange: how the Wikileaks founder alienated his allies" posted in February 2013, and the second posted online in 2010 on The New Yorker entitled "No Secrets". Both give you insights on his personal behaviors that turn people off. I was particularly impressed with the comments of Jemima Khan, the editor of New Statesman, who reached this conclusion:

On the subject of Assange, pundits on both the left and the right have become more interested in tribalism than truth. The attacks on him by his many critics in the press have been virulent and highly personal. Both sides are guilty of creating political caricatures and extinguishing any possibility of ambivalence. “On the other handism” doesn’t make great copy, but in this particular debate everyone is too polarised. The kind of person who spends his life committed to this type of work, wedded to a laptop, undercover, always on the move, with no security, stability or income, is bound to be a bit different. I have seen flashes of Assange’s charm, brilliance and insightfulness – but I have also seen how instantaneous rock-star status has the power to make even the most clear-headed idealist feel that they are above the law and exempt from criticism.

We all want a hero. After WikiLeaks released the infamous Collateral Murder video in 2010, showing US troops gunning down a dozen civilians in Iraq, I jokingly asked if Assange was the new Jason Bourne, on the run and persecuted by the state. It would be a tragedy if a man who has done so much good were to end up tolerating only disciples and unwavering devotion, more like an Australian L Ron Hubbard.

After so many years of being incarcerated in the Ecuadorian embassy, many journalists and activists have risen above these petty grievances to consider the larger issues involved in his confinement. I think there is a lesson to be learned from this experience: activists in general need to be supported by a large organization. The experience of Assange and associates at Wikileaks have reflected an individualistic spirit that is such an integral part of our capitalist culture. We need to think like socialist revolutionaries who recognize that we need each other to keep our limitations and weaknesses in check in order to avoid being in a situation like Julian Assange is in. 

Trump plans to pull thousands of troops out of Afghanistan – report

Click here to access article from The Guardian.

Donald Trump is planning to withdraw more than 5,000 of the 14,000 US troops in Afghanistan, a US official and US media have said, in the latest sign Trump’s patience with America’s longest war is wearing thin.

On Wednesday, Trump rebuffed top advisers and decided to pull all US troops out of Syria, a decision that was swiftly followed by the abrupt resignation of US defence secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday over significant policy differences with the president.

Watch the 9th Vigil for Assange Live Here Tonight

Click here if wish to access the announcement directly from Consortium News.

Consortium News will broadcast live the 9th Online Vigil for Julian Assange as the pressure continues to mount on the WikiLeaks publisher. Among the special guests tonight will be journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who has just visited Assange at the Ecuador embassy in London.

Join us tonight beginning at 8 pm U.S. EST for the latest Unity4J vigil in support of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. The show will begin with CN Editor Joe Lauria interviewing John Pilger, who’s just been to see Assange.

Why Trump Decided To Remove U.S. Troops From Syria

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

This German expert geopolitical analyst offer his broader view on why Trump decided to withdraw US troops from bases in eastern Syria in spite of neoconservative opposition.

Trump knows that the United States' 'unilateral moment' after the demise of the Soviet Union, which left the U.S. was the sole superpower, is over. Russia is back and China is rising. Trump's policy to adopt [adapt?] to the decreasing U.S. power is to end the 'globalization' that allowed for China's rapid rise. He wants to geopolitical[ly] split this world into two influence spheres. These will be separate from each other in the political, economic, technological and military realms. [my insertions]

....

Trump decided that to prevent Turkey from leaving NATO, and from joining a deeper alliance with Russia, China and Iran, was more important than to further fool around at the margins of the Middle East. It is the right decision.

Why is the United States suddenly withdrawing from Syria?

Click here to access article by Valentin Vasilescu from Voltaire Network. 

This widely recognized Romanian military analyst and expert explains why the US military operations in Syria were essentially checkmated by Russian-Syrian military coordinated with Turkey's obsession to eliminate all Kurdish forces. One must understand that the Syrian Kurds permitted their forces to be used by the USA which then established numerous military bases on Syrian territory that the Kurds controlled. By doing this, they allied themselves with the US Empire that was trying to destroy the Syrian government.

The US military air bases in Syria consist essentially of troops for special operations. By this we mean a light infantry, without any armour or support. They could not therefore ward off any land attack carried out by the Syrian army supported by the Air Force. Having understood that the US Air Force will not be able to pass the Syrian anti-air barrage without unacceptable losses, any US intervention becomes inappropriate. This is why the US has just announced that it will start to withdraw 2,000 soldiers from Syria [1]. At the same time, Turkey, supported by Russia, is getting ready to launch a new offensive against the YPG in Northern Syria. These new circumstances ensure the Syrian Army will fight on the side of Turkey. The YPG, trained and supported by the United States, is quickly losing all the territories that it had taken from the Islamic State which itself had taken from Syria.

It wasn't Trump abandoning the Syrian Kurds as corporate media pundits and government official declared, but US military analysts who, no doubt, saw that their continued military occupation of Syria was now untenable. 

(You may also be interested in Elijah J. Magnier's take on the withdrawal of US forces by reading "USA announces withdrawal from the Levant: time for all parties to rethink their next move".)

World’s governments indulge in symbolism, not action, at COP24

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

Our masters, the owners of the economic enterprises in which we work but have no voice, in the mostly capitalist class-structured world met to discuss measures to halt global warming and the destabilization of our climate, but did essentially nothing. What did you expect?

... our descendants will curse us for doing essentially nothing to combat global warming as they evacuate from flooded coastal cities and struggle to minimize large-scale agricultural disruptions. Each year that nothing concrete is done, the likelihood of catastrophic environmental damage increases. And there are not many years left before worst-case scenarios become inevitable. Just two months ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report on the effects of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and that of 2 degrees warming. There is a significant difference between the expected results of 1.5 and 2 degrees, but the effects at 1.5 are nonetheless serious. The Earth has already warmed by 1 degree, and the IPCC report states that, if current patterns continue, 1.5-degree warming will be reached between 2030 and 2052.

Thus, catastrophic changes well beyond what we are already experiencing could begin to occur in as few as 12 years.

US withdrawal from Syria is ‘major blow’ to Kurdish forces: envoy

Click here to access article from AMN (Al-Masdar Al-‘Arabi--The Arab Source).

My esteem for the investigative reporting of Pepe Escobar just grew greater after the news that Trump ordered US troops out of Syria and abandoning the Syrian Kurds. Back in 2014 he warned that the USA was merely using these people for their own geopolitical interests and would likely abandon them when the Kurds no longer served the Empire's interests. That day has come. However, Escobar was also caught up in the well-touted progressive nature of the Syrian Kurds like many other leftists. Also, Eric Draitser warned about the cynical nature of US intervention to help the Kurds when they were in danger of being wiped out by ISIS. (Unfortunately, Draitser seems no longer to be publishing much of significance.)

But following these warnings we saw various sources extolling the "progressive nature" of the Syrian Kurds. For some examples, read articles by David Graeber and Marcel Cartier who uncritically and consistently accepted the entire progressive themes of the Syrian Kurds. Graeber now appears on the board of The Region which to me smells like a Zionist propaganda operation.

One website, Reflections on a Revolution, vigorously promoted the progressive nature of the Syrian Kurds. ROAR which was founded by Jerome Roos 2011 and sold it a few years ago to a Dutch based "equity fund" by the name of "Democracy and Media Education Foundation". Jerome remained as editor. Now I notice that it is referred to as "Dutch Foundation for Autonomous Media". Whether Roos is some Israeli agent running a propaganda organization or a misguided "progressive" who genuinely believes the progressive narrative cannot be determined. I do know that he never posted or published articles by independent journalists who saw indications that suggested there were also narrower Kurdish aims involved as well as the geopolitical aims of the US Empire: establishing a Kurdish nation by linking up with the Iraqi Kurds and the Syrian Kurds being used as a pawn by the US Empire to justify their military incursion. I am referring to articles I posted by Thierry Meyssan, Marwa Osman, Alison Banville, Brandon Turbeville, Sarah Abed, Stephen Gowans, etc.

Recommended articles for Wednesday, December 19, 2018

• Report: U.S. To Leave Syria Immediately - Updated by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama. This news has been run by numerous other websites. (At 5 PM CT I've noticed that much of msm are framing it as "after the defeat of ISIS".)

• The working class and the environmental crisis by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site. 

The inability of capitalism and the nation-state system to resolve the climate crisis was on display over the past two weeks in Katowice, Poland, the site of yet another UN-sponsored climate summit. The representatives of more than 200 governments, including 25,000 bureaucrats, scientists and diplomats, could not even agree to endorse a report on the looming dangers of global warming, let alone take any serious action to forestall it.

They adopted a meaningless rulebook to implement the Paris climate agreement, which climate scientists regard as completely inadequate.

• Burying the axe of war by Elijah J Magnier, a Kuwaiti independent journalist, from his blog. I much prefer the headline in the same post from Russia Insider: "Sudanese President Arrives in Syria Aboard Russian Plane as Mailman of the Saudis".

• The Fed Is Panicking by Naomi Prins from Daily Reckoning.

• The political fraud of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” by Will Morrow from World Socialist Web Site.

A socialist response to climate change cannot take place through the Democratic Party or within the framework of capitalism. It requires the organization of production according to a rational, scientific plan on a global scale. This requirement is fundamentally incompatible with both the private ownership of humanity’s productive forces (and the subordination of production according to the profit interests of the capitalist class), and the continued division of the world into rival national states, who compete on behalf of their own capitalist class for markets, profits and geostrategic control.

Preface to "The Enemy of Nature"

Click here to read this preface to a new book by Joel Kovel (by the above title), and posted on The Greanville Post.

I wrote The Enemy of Nature according to the principle that the truth – a sufficiently generous and expansive truth, it may be added – can make us free. If truth gives clarity and definition to our world, if it weans us from dependency on alienating forces that sap our will and delude our mind, and if it can bring us together with others in a common empowering project – a project that gives us hope that we can become the makers of our own history – why, then, then it makes us free even if what it reveals is terrible to behold. Better this than the unrevealed terror in the dark, unenvisioned, without opening to hope, better than what inertly weighs on us under the aegis of the capitalist order.

The Enemy of Nature was written in service of such an ideal. It tries to give expression to an emerging and still incomplete realization that our all-conquering capitalist system of production, the greatest and proudest of all the modalities of transforming nature which the human species has yet devised, the defining influence in modern culture and the organizer of the modern state, is at heart the enemy of nature and therefore humanity’s executioner as well.

I think to clarify this issue, I would assert that nature in general will not be threatened or assaulted by the activities of capitalists; but that part of nature--our habitat on this planet--is being, and will be, destroyed by them. The planet will hardly blink at the disappearance of humans and so many other species that they will have destroyed. New species will thrive without us.