Articles recommended for Saturday, July 27, 2019

• How Fast is the Climate Changing? by John Molyneux from Rebel (Ireland).

• CapitalGate’s the Problem, Not Russiagate by Frank Scott from Dissident Voice.

• Destabilizing Pakistan: Bookending Washington’s China Policy by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook. 

• “Human Right Activists” Celebrate Facebook-Twitter Censorship by Joseph Thomas from New Eastern Outlook.  

• First setbacks for the Muslim Brotherhood by Thierry Meyssan from his weblog Voltaire Network.

How Capital Heats the Planet: Introducing Fordulat Journal’s Latest Issue on “Climate Change and Capitalism”

Click here to access a review by Zsolt Kapelner of a recent leftist journal (in Hungarian) devoted to a leftist perspective on climate destabilization. (Once again, I must thank an activist for forwarding this article to me.)

Kapelner's review covers both radical perspectives: that of a bottom-up reconstruction of society and a state structure supported by the people to challenge capital's way of exploiting man and nature to the fullest (a la Cuba). The journal articles also advocate a variety of other schemes to modify capital's normal practices in a last ditch attempt toward sustainable economies.

I have over the life of this weblog (nearly 10 years) gone from pointing out the need to change the system of capitalism which is the fundamental dynamic factor which determines the way we live to urgently advocating a revolutionary necessity to overturn capitalism, and finally to a position that recognizes that it is too late to avoid extinction but we should prepare revolutionary strategies to attack capitalism to punish the class who benefits from it.

I'm no philosopher, but I recognize that humans have evolved from primitive notions of humans as being the center of reality, which gave rise to many supernatural mythologies (religions) to explain this notion, to where we are today: reassuring views emanating from the ruling capitalist class that hijacked science, which emphasized material reality of our existence, to serve their class of people--the owners of our economies. Thus, instead of science being used to serve the health and welfare of people in general, it has been used in a very manipulative way to serve only this tiny class of capitalists at the expense of the rest of humanity and preserving our natural environment. I concluded that this class of people became addicted to the power and wealth that their self-serving system delivered to them. Now we are facing the extinction of nearly all life of our planet Earth.

Because of the time scale of the destruction of our environment is so large in comparison to our human life span, we humans in general failed to discover this destruction until it was nearly at the end stages of catastrophe (about 1970). Yet we still had time to change our fate and we had warnings at the time, but capitalist agents were always urgently motivated to pursue their control of the Earth's population of humans. They downplayed such warnings by obscuring the issues, adding many distractions (wars included), outright censorship of any views of our impending doom, etc.

Now I think it is too late to save ourselves; but in the time remaining, I think that the class has brought this about--the high crime of our extinction in addition to those of many other species--must be punished. I have no doubt as the climate destabilization progresses to dramatic alterations that threaten human life, it will awaken people to the necessity of dramatically altering the way we live in a desperate attempt to save the human species from extinction. But as the environment that supports human life (and that of many other species) begins to dramatically destabilize as it is becoming obvious now, I think it will become increasingly clear to most populations that the class who are responsible for this greatest of all crimes must be punished. Those of us conscious of this end must prepare people for this remaining task. Thus, I see in these journal articles preliminary attempts to do just that.       

Articles recommended for Friday, July 26, 2019

• Mindbreaking - The mental health effects of environmental change by Jan Wyllie and Jennifer Hynes via YouTube. See also this link. (Thanks go to an activist for alerting me to this post.)

• Not In My Name: Academics Publicly Attacking UN Torture Rapporteur by "contraspin" from BSNews.

• Chelsea Manning’s lawyer refutes conspiracy allegation against Julian Assange by Mike Head from World Socialist Web Site.

Once Again Chomsky and Achcar Provide a Service to the US Global Dictatorship

Click here to access article by Canadian Stephen Gowans from his weblog.

Gowans accuses some of America's as well as Britains leading intellectuals as collaborating with the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire to destabilize governments that the Empire doesn't like with most recent target of Venezuela. He accuses them of using sophistry to rationalize these destabilization efforts. Chomsky and Democracy Now's Amy Goodman have already dramatically demonstrated this by their opposition to questioning the government's version of what happened on 9/11/2001 and many other crimes instigated by the Empire (see this, this, this, this, and this).

Recommended articles for Thursday, July 25, 2019

• New book launched: ‘An important contribution to the fight to stop capitalist destruction’, a book review of System Change Not Climate Change by Valerie Lannon from Climate & Capitalism

• End Forever War? Divest Zionism by Kurt Nimmo from his weblog Another Day in the Empire.

• War Profiteers and the Demise of the US Military-Industrial Complex by Dmitry Orlov from his weblog Club Orlov. 

• Pentagon May Have To Explain Their 1,000 Bases, a post via YouTube from Redacted Tonight.

• People Think Epstein Was a Spy for an Intelligence Agency — and They Might Be Right by Derrick Broze from Activist Post.

Articles recommended for Tuesday, July 23, 2019

• Challenging global corporate power by James Shultz from Ecologist.

• Acid oceans may trigger mass extinction by Tim Radford from Climate News Network.

• Khamenei’s three commandments for the Iranians: the Middle East is heading towards “maximum danger" by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog.

• Did John Bolton Light the Fuse of the UK-Iranian Tanker Crisis? by Gareth Porter from Dissident Voice. 

• B(o)r-exit by Bernhard (Germany) from his weblog Moon of Alabama.

• Do You Choose the Truth or War Propaganda? Your Choice Makes a Difference. By Mark Taliano from Global Research.  

• The Just World Fallacy: Why People Bash Assange And Defend Power by Caitlin Johnstone from Medium. (Recently I have been having increasingly difficulties accessing her website. Yesterday and today I have been unable. Censorship?)

• Multinational Pharmaceuticals and Medicine: Under Fire Worldwide by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos from United World (Turkey).

• How the pharmaceutical companies, Congress and the DEA made the opioid epidemic a billion-dollar industry by Genevieve Leigh from World Socialist Web Site.

March of the Uyghurs

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook (independent news and analysis based in Russia).

Vltchek has a number of unnamed sources he uses to support his report on the latest "useful idiots" used by Western subversive agents to undermine the Chinese government's control of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. We must rely on Vltchek's unnamed sources for much of this; so if you consider him a reliable source (as I do), read the article to discover the details of this project to undermine China.

Agents of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire frequently use various disgruntled populations to undermine their primary challengers to their power and profits: China, Russia, and Iran. Iran suffers the most aggressive threats because the Empire views them as the most easily bullied by threats to their country, but Russia and China are too powerful to bully. Thus Chechens in Russia were used by the Empire to damage Russia, the Kurds and their aspirations for independence have been used by the Empire and Israel to undermine the Syrian government, and the Uyghurs are used to undermine China. Sometimes this done in the name of "human rights", but this is only a cynical public relations cover to promote their interests of being in control of the world to serve their insatiable appetites for more profits and power.

How Capital Heats the Planet: Introducing Fordulat Journal’s Latest Issue on “Climate Change and Capitalism”

Click here to access article by Zsolt Kapelner posted on LeftEast (based in Romania).

This article reports on the efforts of Hungarians to target capitalism as being the cause for the increasingly obvious phenomenon of global warming.

As temperatures rose close to 50°C in North India and water supplies were about to cease, and as a tremendous heat wave descended upon Europe, a sizeable crowd gathered on 18 June in the community centre/pub Gólya operated by a leftist cooperative in the middle of Budapest, Hungary. The occasion was the publication of the new issue of the social theory journal Fordulat(“Turn”) on Climate Change and Capitalism.

The journal was established in 1985 and has since been run by the College for Advanced Studies in Social Theory, a hub of Marxist and left-leaning students of social sciences that regularly publishes thematic issues on topics such as Social Reproduction or Digital Capitalism. Each issue, produced in Hungarian, collects translations, book reviews and original papers on the topic in question.

Extinction Rebellion: Not the Struggle we Need, Pt. 1

Click here to access article by a group called "Out of the Woods" posted on libcom.org, an anarchist website based in France. 

This is a critique of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) that is most active in Europe as a means of preventing the extinction of humans that is driven by the capitalist empire known informally, but accurately, as the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. There have been a number of article posted on Wrong Kind of Green (see this and this) that has revealed the top-down nature of this movement and the likely involvement of agents of the ruling capitalist class to supervise it. This post reinforces this contention by the well documented examination of actual events of people who have participated in XR activities. 

This critique is not to damage the efforts of well meaning people participating in XR activities, but to insure that the movement is not controlled by the Empire in order to preserve their system of capitalism that is destroying the habitat of nearly all living things.

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case

Click here to access article by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News. 

Although I skimmed this article and recommended it before, I now wish to offer a brief commentary on introduction to this piece.

Webb explains the long American history in which organized crime has operated at the highest political levels to coerce government officials into supporting their interests. Nowadays it appears that the capitalist system has devolved into a system which supports organized crime rather than the welfare of the American people. Because of the key role that the USA plays in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, the interests of organized crime affects all nations of the world. 

It is increasingly hard to differentiate organized crime from contemporary capitalism. This is because it has now fully integrated, or merged, with the capitalist system. This system seems to be a perfect host for organized crime. (For a good history of this development, I highly recommend reading a book entitled The Money and the Power by S. Denton & R. Morris.) 

Dynamic Systems, Ocean Acidification, and Tipping Points

Click here to access article by Paul Beckwith from his weblog Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist.

In this article Beckwith explains to ordinary people the complex nature of the Earth's oceans which are now, due to the vast increase of the burning of fossil fuels during this industrial era, rapidly acidifying at a rate that is unprecedented in the Earth's history dating back hundreds of millions of years ago. 

Two recommended articles to keep you informed about the latest threats to human existence (Saturday, July 20, 2019)

• Britain Pirates Iranian Ship 'Grace 1' - Iran Responds - Takes British Tanker Hostage by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama.

• Most Important Message Ever from Arctic News. Credit for this post goes to an activist who submitted it to me.

Articles recommended for Friday, July 19, 2019

• Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News.

• Inside the Yellow Vests: What the Western media will not report (Part 3) by Ollie Richardson from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

• Sergey Lavrov’s interview with the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty (transcript) from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

• Western intellectuals freak over ‘Frankenstein’ China by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times. 

• WikiLeaks Editor Kristinn Hrafnsson, Michael Isikoff, Pepe Escobar, As’ad AbuKhalil on CN Live! Friday 2pm EDT from Consortium News.

• Drug companies poured 76 billion opioid pills into US neighborhoods in just six years by Genevieve Leigh from World Socialist Web Site. 

To the Moon!

Click here to access article by Deena Stryker from New Eastern Outlook.

I think Stryker has got something, that is, some kernel of valid insight from the recent abundant coverage by media corporations about the next big thing--returning to the moon and going to the other planets. I initially thought that this was only a commemoration of the moon landing in 1969, but I now think they have another agenda.

After reading this article, I think that our ruling masters in the Empire's capitalist class, who are thoroughly addicted to profits and power, are looking elsewhere for their salvation. They have essentially given up on this planet, and want us to support them in their new agenda of saving themselves. Their self-serving system of capitalism has destroyed our habitat on planet Earth so they want to move to another planet (and repeat the same cycle). Their promotion and widespread coverage of this new venture is to subvert our minds into supporting this project by sacrificing our already perilous existence in order to save them!

Following the 2008 economic meltdown, knowing that the earth is likely to become inhospitable to humans in the near future, the 1% ceased pretending to care about the 99%, quoting Stephan Hawking Stephen Hawking:

“I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let’s hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load.”

“Even if humans manage to avoid a nuclear stand-off over the next thousand years, our fate on this planet is still pretty much certain. University of Sussex astrophysicist Dr. Robert Smith says eventually the aging Sun will accelerate global warming to a point where all of Earth’s water will simply evaporate.” 

16 Tons of Madness

Click here to access article by John R. Hall from Dissident Voice.

There are so many insights about political reality packed in this article and so many experiences that I can identify with. Hall was a dissident and activist during the Vietnam War among young people. I, who was slightly older, tried to warn this generation of the lies spread by our media corporations in support of this war and the ruling class's project of building their empire. 

Long ago I discovered the secret of their success which I attributed to their incessant indoctrination and the use of psychological warfare techniques on ordinary Americans that were so similar to their efforts to sell all their fast foods, cosmetics, and other worthless junk solely to obtain profit for capitalists in place of more costly services to really benefit the health and welfare of ordinary Americans. 

The ruling capitalist class convinced Americans that this was the American Way of Life and that their families would flourish if they played along. And they did. The ruling class were dedicated to their self-serving project of profit and power; but to accomplish this, they had to erase through their propaganda and indoctrination any class consciousness that ordinary Americans might have that was left over from the Great Depression of the 1930s. And they did.

Immediately after WWII they launched a comprehensive campaign to rid ordinary American of any beliefs about a class consciousness by inculcating beliefs about the "Red Menace" and the Russian threat. They used all their media, political as well as all institutions in this effort to substitute a fear of the Russians for lingering notions of social-economic justice which they labeled subversive. This period was known as McCarthyism. They also used the carrots of full employment, GI Bill, and the much vaunted "Yankee know-how" among ordinary Americans to distract them from any "subversive" thoughts about their imperialist foreign policies and contribute to the building of their empire. And American families benefited ... for a while. 

Then in the 1980s they saw corporations buying out and merging with other corporations to reap ever greater concentrations of wealth and power. Later on in the 1980s these behemoth corporations saw their next opportunity to obtain profits and power from employing desperate low paid workers in other countries, and they moved their factories there. The story is far more complex than I can express, but the result has been the disappearance of any sense of class consciousness and "Yankee know-how". Instead we have seen the rise of poverty, homelessness, massive debts incurred by ordinary Americans, never-ending wars, the destabilization of our climate, etc. 

Hall vividly describes where we are now to those of us who can still manage to see reality somewhat clearly.  

Articles recommended for Monday, July 15, 2019

• The UK must release the Iranian tanker; The UAE’s mission to Tehran by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog.

• As Cost of Climate Crisis Grows, Climate Movement Escalates by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers from Dissident Voice.

• Why are Anti-Migrant Arguments Pure Hypocrisy? by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook. 

• Understanding American Capitalism (Revisited/ 2), a book review and analysis by Patrice Greanville from his weblog The Greanville Post. 

• XR [Extinction Rebellion] summer rebellion begins by Sian Harrison and Sam Tobin from Ecologist.

From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment: Romanticism as a Tool for Elite Agendas

Click here to access article by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin from Dissident Voice.

The author demonstrates how characterizations of major ideological trends of thought are largely influenced by ruling classes ("elites"). One such period called the Enlightenment, which emphasized the discoveries of the material nature of our Earth (and a little beyond), also was anathema to the rise of capitalist ruling classes. 

In addition, the Enlightenment examined the old ideas of feudalism and discovered that they were full of errors like the divine right of kings, feudalism's cosmology which placed the Earth at the center of the universe, and obedience to Roman Catholicism also gave rise to a whole new range of ideas that were first dramatically expressed during the French Revolution and soon led to socialist ideas, that is, to ideas of equality of rights and opportunities among inhabitants of regions. 

However, simultaneous to this, capitalist classes arose in various European countries which would soon formed ruling classes in those countries, and they saw such ideas as incompatible with their interests of private economic property and all the benefits derived from that ownership and control. They soon shaped what became known as a ideological period of Romanticism. This period was characterized not only by the mystification of nature but to differences such as language, race, and above all, nationalism that always favored the regions under the control of capitalist ruling classes.

The influence of Romanticism on politics shifted revolutionary thinking from burgeoning socialist movements to nationalism instead. Nationalism is the perfect class conciliatory ideology in that it retained the full social order/hierarchy (i.e. it includes the elites) and homogenised the people by excluding other national languages and foreign communities while putting the elites into positions of leadership and control.

Using divide and rule tactics and stirring up xenophobic attitudes and fears, the elites ran the new homogenised nations and used them for their old purposes: war. Modern global power struggles of the twentieth century started with nation set against nation in the First World War. 

Now we have entered a period identified as neoliberalism (the ideology of the new capitalism) as the capitalist ruling classes have outgrown their nation-states and formed transnational capitalist ruling classes such as we see in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire versus the rest of the world. Trump represents ideologically the earlier period of capitalism which glorified nationalism while the Deep State (see this, this, this, and this), which is in command of the Empire, pushes their neoliberal agendas under the Empire using deceptive psychological practices developed in propaganda against enemies in WWI and WWII, but this time aimed at their own populations. 

Recommended articles for Saturday, July 13, 2019 [updated]

• Challenging capitalism is the ultimate climate mitigation strategy by Hans Baer (Australian) from Climate & Capitalism.

• What’s really going on in Hong Kong by Reese Ehrlich from 48 Hills (San Francisco based). 

• Top Assange Defense Account Deleted By Twitter by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 

• ‘We did bad, evil things there’ – Vet turned peace activist on growing dissent with US forever wars by Kareem Raheem from RT.

Iran Keeps Calm While U.S. And Britain Continue Their Provocations

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

This article is a warning not to trust fake Western news reports--as if we needed any. But we do! The public of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire have short memories. Every generation needs to be reminded of the past false narratives by the capitalist ruling class in order to get their support for war. But can the public be reminded? There is decreasing chances of this happening because of the ongoing development of capitalism to increase the concentration of ownership and/or control of all institutions. 

Well paid ruling class  agents only need to fool about 65% of their nation's populace in order to promote wars. Under current circumstances of the concentration of ownership and infiltration of other media corporations, this is quite easily achieved.

Bernhard isn't fooled which is common among people who pay attention. But worker populations of the Empire are mired in debts, work long hours, and have been intentionally conditioned not to think critically by most public schools that they are fairly easily influenced by fake or exaggerated reports. Still, most populations are fed up with ongoing wars and the steady deterioration of their living standards, and thus it is becoming harder for propaganda agents to get them to support Empire wars. 

Two articles recommended for Thursday, July 11, 2019

• The Muslim Brotherhood as an auxiliary force of MI6 and the CIA by Thierry Meyssan (French independent political analyst) from his weblog Voltaire Network.

• The Death of Privacy: Government Fearmongers to Read Your Mail by Philip Giraldi from Strategic Culture Foundation (independent website based in Russia).