Recommended articles for Friday, August 16, 2019 (updated as of 1:42 PM CT)

• We Need to Talk About Search by James Corbett (a Canadian living in Japan) from his weblog The Corbett Report.

• Lies, Damned Lies, and Sustainable Development by Bill Willers from Dissident Voice.

• La Danse Mossad: Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein by Jennifer Matsui from CounterPunch.

• As climate crisis grows, temperatures set global records from Climate & Capitalism.

• Time is running out by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

• Fighting For Freedom In The Heart Of The Global Capitalist Empire by John Laurits from his weblog Revolution Dispatch.

Jeffrey Epstein and the Spectacle of Secrecy

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from his weblog Behind the Curtin.

I love this article so much that I didn't want to merely include it on my "receommended" list where I usually put important articles. In this land of make-believe that is the USA, some articles have much more profound effects on me than others. This is one. 

Some of his concluding remarks especially resonate with me: 

Those of us who oppose these criminals – and there are growing numbers all over the world – must avoid being sucked into the establishment narratives and the counter-narratives they spawn or create.  We must refuse to get involved in pseudo-debates that are meant to lead nowhere.  We must reject the language created to confuse.

If revolutionary change is to come, we must learn to tell a new story in language so beautiful, illuminating, and heart-rending that no one will listen to the lying words of child molesters, mass murderers, and those who hate and persecute truth tellers.

Brave New Money: PayPal, WeChat, Amazon Go - A Totalitarian World Currency in the Making (updated)

Click here to access article by Norbert Häring (German economist) from his weblog. (Update: Because Part 2 enlarges the topic to digital money in general, I won't be posting Part 2.) 

I am only posting one of the two part articles today, and will be posting the second part tomorrow. I can't say I understood everything he writes, probably because English is a second language for him, but I think he is one of the few who are concerned about developments that already are underway using digital money plus surveillance technology.

Because I am on Häring's email list, I received this article and several others. I encourage others who are concerned about this issue to do likewise--and, in my opinion, every thinking person should be concerned. Because money in its current form in the USA has mostly enabled our capitalist ruling class to maintain control over it. Of course, because the latter have so obscured the meaning of money and issues concerned with it, much like all other similar issues, they want us to remain in ignorance. But Häring, who will not tolerate this ignorance, alerts us on how these new development using digital money and surveillance technology very likely will have negative consequences for ordinary people.

I think these developments are very much going on under the radar of ordinary people's consciousness. I rarely have seen it addressed elsewhere, and I think it clearly represents a dramatic move toward all the horrible futures scenarios imagined by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, the Wachowskis and their film The Matrix, and similar science fiction works. Such scenarios are now on their way to being implemented in the leading capitalist nations as well as in China. 

Digitization of money combined with the recent technological advances in surveillance are making these nightmarish scenarios possible and so appealing to our ruling masters. Because this new money is so convenient for us, we like it. But it comes loaded with the convenience of capturing all sorts of information about us and several other abuses. It appears that it matters not whether ruling classes are capitalist or shortsighted Chinese Communists because the digitization of money has the potential of giving them overwhelming control over us. Control and domination seem to be the most sought after drugs by, and for, ruling classes to get "high" (def.). Häring seems to be one of the few who are concerned about the adverse consequences for us.

I am convinced that only a thoroughly democratic society could use this new digital money, and we are a long way from accomplishing that. But since "we're all gonna die anyway", why worry? We are all fucked (def.#2)! And, obviously I don't mean in Vietnam. The destabilization of the climate will soon do the job for us, and a short-time later, the ruling classes (their fantasies about escaping to another planet are simply that--fantasies). Unlike our present societies and all wars, climate destabilization and/or a global nuclear war, will ignore inequality.

Articles recommended for Wednesday, August 14, 2019

• Trump dangles trade deal for Britain’s tougher line on Iran & China by Finian Cunningham from RT.

• Time is running out by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

• Violent Protests In Hong Kong Reach Their Last Stage by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama (Germany). His take on the Hong Kong protests.

• Bulldog Britain Hears Master’s Voice by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation (based in Russia).

Corporate media after the latest shooting incidents is driving people nuts in the USA

By Ron Horn.

I gave up on media corporations quite some time ago after the 9/11 event. Before that there was an occasional useful interpretation of events, but now they cover events like the mass shooting incidents only superficially with instant, suspiciously fake interpretations. There have been many reports in alternative, independent media, mostly online, of CIA infiltration of media corporations (see for examples: this, this, this, and this) that suggest such coverage by media corporations is largely propaganda to serve the interests of the capitalist Deep State and/or their US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. I don't pay much attention to their coverage of these events, and I won't be commenting on them at the present time. 

In spite of polling data which seems to indicate that ordinary people view with disdain and skepticism news and analysis provided by media corporations, I still think that media corporations have a major influence on how ordinary people view such events. One only has to look at these current articles (see this, this, this, and this) largely from liberal-left online websites that take the coverage provided by media corporation of the shootings seriously, and try rather desperately to sort the wheat of truth from the chaff of deceptions (fake news and analysis).

My many years of activism has given me a rather cynical view of coverage by media corporations. For example, I knew instantly in 2001 when I saw on TV the collapsing of the twin towers of the World Trade Center that their coverage was designed as a major false-flag event in order to generate fear in Americans. However, I didn't know at the time the ultimate purpose of the event. Only later I became aware that our ruling class were preparing us for their agenda to re-shape the Middle East. 

This is the reaction I have now regarding the mass shootings: wait and see what solid evidence sheds light on what is truly going on. I'm not arguing that these were contrived events, but I view their coverage by media corporations with considerable skepticism. I think that more time is needed to uncover the true reasons behind their coverage and interpretations.

Articles recommended for Tuesday, August 13, 2019

• Corporate Media Enters Realm of the Absurd with Claim that Venezuela Is ‘Cocaine Capital of the World’ by John McEvoy from The Canary (British).

• Cover the climate crisis like it is one by Dawn Stover from Defend Democracy Press.

• Ian Angus on the Politics of Ecosocialism, an interview with Angus by the editors of Rebel (Ireland).

• Study shows human impacts on oceans nearly doubled in recent decade, could double again without adequate action by Jenny Seifert, University of California - Santa Barbara, from Phys.org.

• Our Banner of Deceit is Leading the US to Failure (a re-post of an excellent article from 2017) by Dmitry Orlov from Russia Insider.

New Models Point to More Global Warming Than We Expected

Click here to access article by Bob Henson from Weather Underground.

Because I am not trained/educated significantly in the physical sciences, I don't pretend to understand many technical concepts by climate scientists. This article is an example of the latter. But, because I have had extensive training in the social sciences, much of it outside of conventional curricula, I have been left with the glaring impression of the extent our tiny ruling capitalist classes will lie to protect their system which gives them dominance over the vast majority of humans (99.9%). 

The capitalist system is like a cancer: it requires incessant growth to maintain itself. Mostly independent scientists have for the last 50 years warned our masters of the evidence pointing to this crisis, but the latter regard this information as intolerable. Capitalist ruling classes have punished scientists along with other critics of their system using economic sanctions by imposing roadblocks on their careers. Most scientists consciously and instinctively know this; and to guard their careers, they go out of the way to subdue the truth about the crisis. Knowing this and our masters' capacity to lie and deny, I have during the past several years concluded that our capitalist masters are pathologically obsessed with avoiding the truth about the climate crisis and the fundamental contradiction between climate stability and their system. 

Capitalist ruling classes have demonstrated the extent of their ability to tell lies (I don't think most of them are aware that they are lying--it's mostly unconscious) through their control of every institution of advanced capitalist nations. In my obsessive pursuit of truth, I have become aware of this insight over many years of social justice and anti-war protests, formal education (political sociology), and informal education through reading of often hard-to-find books and articles. Thus, I have become indelibly conscious that such ruling classes will lie, cheat, and murder millions to propagandize and indoctrinate us in the wonders and virtues of capitalism, and to deny their many crimes. They are consumed by the pathology of dominance and control.

So, nowadays, as we descend into the crisis of climate destabilization, there is no limit to their pathological attempt to deny the evidence of impending disasters and assured extinction. Because humans are so susceptible to this pathology, capitalists along with the vast gullible majority will become extinct. But not only human species. I've learned that most other species will not survive this catastrophe. The monstrosity of this crime grows ever larger.

Articles recommended for Monday, August 12, 2019

• On Contact: Climate Emergency with Roger Hallam, Extinction Rebellion. Chris Hedges interviews Hallam regarding the growing climate crisis from RT America.

• The World is Uniting for International Law, against US Empire by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers from Dissident Voice (based in Canada).

• Understanding the Chaos in Yemen: An Interview with Brecht Jonkers by Damir Nazarov from Geopolitics Alert.

• Capitalism an engine of unstoppable inequality: Bloomberg by Patrice Greanville from The Greanville Post.

• Adding Context to ‘News’ about Venezuela by Eric Zuesse from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

• Everything you know about Charles Manson is wrong! by Jeff Schechtman from Who, What, Why.

• Everyone’s A Conspiracy Theorist, Whether They Know It Or Not by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Climate change reports warn of a world on the brink by Bryan Dyne from World Socialist Web Site.

Rojava: A practical example of ecosocialism?

Click here to access article by "Make Rojava Green Again" posted on Climate & Capitalism.

I was amazed that the Monthly Review crowd behind this website was deceived by this Empire propaganda piece. Its inspiration is a recent book entitled Make Rojava Green Again published self-servingly by the Internationalist Commune of Rojava.  Rojava, for the people who don't know, is a center of the Kurdish enclave in northern Syria that has collaborated with, and supported by, US forces.

Five years ago a number of pieces started appearing in left-wing websites that extolled the same kind of pro-Kurdish propaganda that the Syrian Kurds were the most progressive scene on the face of the earth because they were supposedly promoting feminist and a new radical form of a socialist government.

In late 2014 I noticed a report by David Graeber from The Guardian and others reports, mostly in the website of Reflections on a Revolution (since sold to a non-profit organization) extolling the Syrian Kurds as having a very appealing ideal of progressive ideas about how to organize a society. And, I was so easily convinced of this view because of the authors or the sources. 

Then in early 2016 I started noticing reports that gave a very different picture. In 2017 there was a number of articles that took issue with the earlier reports (see especially this, this, and this), and that viewed the Syrian Kurds as being used by the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire to balkanize Syria (this was a favorite strategy used to attack their enemy nations by the British in their earlier empire). I was thoroughly convinced of this view when Stephen Gowans posted his article in 2017 entitled "The Myth of the Kurdish YPG’s Moral Excellence".

Still, we see articles like this one and by Pete Dolack, normally a progressive writer, that keep on extolling the Syrian Kurds and that the Empire must defend them! I never cease to being amazed by the Empire propagandists and their accomplishments to infiltrate and influence leftist organizations to post articles like this one.

Articles recommended for Saturday, August 10, 2019 (updated)

• US Seizes Cargo Ship Trying to Deliver Food to Venezuela by Jason Ditz from AntiWar.

• Epstein Suicided by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama. Also another article from ZeroHedge on the same subject suggested by an activist.

• Graeme MacQueen, 9/11: The Pentagon’s B Movie from The Greanville Post, originally from Progressive Spirit.

• The Misanthropic Bankers Behind the Green New Deal by Matthew Ehret from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Hiroshima Unlearned: Time To Tell the Truth About US Relations with Russia

Click here to access article by Alice Slater from Defend Democracy Press.

Slater doesn't even begin to explain how and why the capitalist ruling classes have forbidden any serious attempt to draw the right lessons from this horrendous event and all other events since then.

The extensive history of major political events since the Russian Revolution has encompassed military invasions, CIA subversive actions (including the "Color Revolutions"), infiltration of media corporations, educational institutions to obliterate the true history since this revolution, etc. She focuses on only one dramatic event.  Since the end of WWII the US Empire engaged in one of history's worst crime of mind altering accomplishments motivated by capitalist ruling classes to preserve their system from any good examples that the vast majority of the Earth's people might create. One of the results was the distortion of socialism.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 shocked the capitalist ruling classes all over the globe. (I covered this in a series of posts in October and November 2017 commemorating the hundredth anniversary. Type in "Russian Revolution" in any of my search engines scattered across my weblog.)  This decisive event of the 20th century established the first government that banned any significant private ownership of the economy. (Only small family-run businesses were permitted.) 

Since that time capitalist ruling classes have fought obsessively to crush this economic arrangement and to prevent it from spreading. (See this and this.) The British led the efforts, along with at least 13 other nations, after the Revolution to militarily destroy it. (Yes, the USA participated.) The extensive capitalist ruling classes efforts did not destroy the Soviet Union, but they succeeded in distorting much of the fabric of Russian socialism which led to its collapse in 1990, and have largely prevented the establishment of socialist governments elsewhere in the world. Cuba is hanging on by a thread, and Venezuela's efforts are being threatened. In my opinion, China's rule by the Communist Party with its substantial capitalist sector has still to prove itself. 

The history of this sordid, long series of events has been carefully and successfully hidden from the American people. Since then, one of history's most significant event has been rewritten by well paid historians and others employed by Western media and entertainment corporations. This largely successful propaganda and indoctrination effort has been overwhelmingly successful. Slater focuses on only one horrendous event in this long and complex history.

In these dreadful current times, we see the rise of major countries like Russia, China, and Iran, which are pursing a multilateral world, are threatening the dominance of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire which replaced the overtly fascist empires of Germany, Japan, and Italy in WWII.

Articles recommended for Friday, August 9, 2019

• Climate Crisis Means the Ruling Class has Failed. Can the Working Class Inherit the Earth? by Richard Moser from Be Freedom.

• John Pilger warns: “Do not forget Assange. Or you will lose him” by Oscar Grenfell  from World Socialist Web Site.

• Chelsea Manning faces $441,000 in fines and another year in jail for refusing to testify against WikiLeaks by Niles Niemuth from World Socialist Web Site.

• Buttigieg Already Courting Super-Delegates for Support from The Jimmy Dore Show.

• Colin Kaepernick posts training video to remind NFL he's been out of the league for 3 years by Liz Roscher from Yahoo Sports.

Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China

Click here to access article by Ellen Brown from TruthDig.

Brown essentially argues that a capitalist state should manage their corporations on behalf of the capitalist class like China does. This thesis confirms her support for the capitalist class which is what I've inferred from writings in the past. To argue her thesis, she cites a number of examples of countries (referred to as "Asian Tigers economies" and Japan) that between 1960s and into the 1990s had a strong government sector that supported their capitalist enterprises. 

They were quite easily taken down by the imperial USA in the 1997 Asian crisis, and she doesn't explain why they were defeated at the time by the neoliberal policies of the US Empire, and she doesn't explain why China wasn't (other than their economy was too big). I think that China's Communist Party were far more protective of their industries both private and state-owned. 

The shallow-thinking Brown doesn't hesitate to argue her thesis that the US should adopt such a government like China. To support her argument, she also draws on an article in Foreign Affairs, a core ruling capitalist class publication, in which surprisingly advocates a similar government arrangement for the US and argues against the belligerent policies of the Obama and Trump administrations! She summarize the argument of that article as being the following:

The implication is that China, being too strong to be knocked out of the game as the Soviet Union was, needs to be coerced or cajoled into adopting the neoliberal model and abandoning state support of its industries and ownership of its banks. [This she ignores.] But the Chinese system, while obviously not perfect, has an impressive track record for sustaining long-term growth and development. While the U.S. manufacturing base was being hollowed out under the free-market model, China was systematically building up its own manufacturing base and investing heavily in infrastructure and emerging technologies, and it was doing this with credit generated by its state-owned banks. Rather than trying to destroy China’s economic system, it might be more “favorable to U.S. interests and values” for us to adopt its more effective industrial and banking practices.

She has long argued that banking should be government owned, and this article is no exception--only she wants banks to support the interests of capitalists!  In spite of the fact that she recognizes that most industries are state owned in China, she still wants banks to support privately owned industries in the USA. This is another liberal argument in support of capitalism. That is, capitalism, must be guided by the capitalist class to more efficiently support US capitalists. 

She is right when she writes that "the free market model hollowed out America’s manufacturing base". US industries under the control of capitalists logically sought short-term profits by transferring their operations to China and a number of other countries where the cost of labor was much cheaper. She can't have it both ways: supporting US capitalists while wanting them to promote national interests. The US and all other capitalist classes only use the nation when it is convenient, and dispenses with the nation when it isn't convenient for their maximization of profits. The prime objective of capitalist ruling classes is that they always seek their own class interests: profits and power. The US/Anglo/Zionist Empire is guided by neoliberal policies which considers national boundaries irrelevant in their pursuit of profits.

Recommended articles for Thursday, August 8, 2019

• China Just Went Nuclear In The Trade War, And There Is No Turning Back Now by Michael Snyder from End of the American Dream.

• The Western Alliance Is Falling Apart by Peter Koenig from Global Research.

• American Exceptionalism = Mass Murder by Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report.

• New Fears for Julian Assange from Consortium News.

• Trump in El Paso: The culprit returns to the scene of the crime by Eric London from World Socialist Web Site.

NATO’s China Double-Think

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Cunningham starts out by castigating such fools as NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg of Norway and other such lackeys of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, but sees the directors of the Empire digging their own graves by their bellicose actions and threats. 

As the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire experience one military defeat after another, threatened by the desertion of countries from the petro-dollar, and mounting debts to 23 trillion dollars, the directors of this Empire are now panicking by threatening everybody and thus, digging its own grave. Such is Cunningham's argument--and I firmly believe he is correct. Because of this I also believe that we are entering a very dangerous phase of the demise of the Empire, and with its demise the shocking effects on the people of the USA.

The War on White Supremacist Terror

Click here to access article by C. J. Hopkins from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc.

The master satirist does it once again: mockingly criticizes our masters in the ruling capitalist class for trying to "beat the drum" (def.) for more attacks on civil liberties (as if there has not been enough under the Patriot Act). (The other major mouth piece of our masters, The Washington Post, is also demanding this. One cannot fault our masters for a lack of coordination.) No doubt they have in mind first attacking "white supremacists" as only a first step; then they will use this to take away what's left of the civil liberties of all of us.   

Hopkins describes the latest scary myth being promoted by our masters to exploit the recent attacks on US citizens in order to curtail our civil liberties:

The official narrative of the moment is Democracy versus The Putin-Nazis (also known as The War on Populism), which I’ve been covering in these columns, satirically and more seriously, for the better part of the last three years. According to this official narrative, “democracy is under attack” by a conspiracy of Russians and neo-Nazis that magically materialized out of thin air during the Summer of 2016, right around the time Trump won the nomination. OK, the Russia part kind of sputtered out recently, so the global capitalist ruling classes and their mouthpieces in the corporate media are now going full-bore on the fascism hysteria. They’ve been doing this relentlessly since Trump won the election, alternating between the Russia hysteria and the fascism hysteria from week to week, day to day, sometimes hour to hour, depending on which one is “hot” at the moment.

These recent mass shootings have provided them with a golden opportunity, not just to flog the fascism hysteria once again, but to fold it into the terrorism hysteria which Americans have been indoctrinated with since September 11, 2001 (the objective of which indoctrination being to establish in the American psyche “the Terrorist” as the new official enemy, replacing the “Communist” official enemy that had filled this role throughout the Cold War). 

Articles recommended for Wednesday, August 7, 2019

• India's Tryst with Destiny: Freedom Struggle from Exploitation and Degradation is Global by Colin Todhunter (Brit.) from his weblog East by Northwest.

• Any Turkish operation into northern Syria ‘unacceptable’: Pentagon chief by "TM" from Turkish Minute.

The following articles have different perspectives regarding the protests/strikes in Hong Kong:

• Hong Kong, Kashmir: a Tale of Two Occupations by Pepe Escobar from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Kashmir and Palestine: The story of two occupations by Goldie Osuri from Al Jazeera (Qatar).

• General strike signals entry of working class into Hong Kong protests by Peter Symonds from World Socialist Web Site.

Articles recommended for Tuesday, August 6, 2019

• US to ring China with missiles in nuclear arms race by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site.

• Charter School Apologia by Shawgi Tell from Dissident Voice.

• More Fake Happy News About Jobs by Paul Craig Roberts from his weblog.

• What kind of rebellion will it take to save humanity from extinction? by Pip Hinman from Green Left Weekly (Australia).

• Nuclear power somehow always makes a loss by Paul Brown from Climate News Network.

• Attack on Iran would be an attack on Russia by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times.

• The Military-Industrial Jobs Scam by Nia Harris, Cassandra Stimpson, and Ben Freeman from TomDispatch.

• Europe’s record heat melted Swiss glaciers by Chelsea Harvey from Science.

• Brazilian institute head fired after clashing with nation’s president over deforestation data by Herton Escobar from Science.

Michael Hudson: Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy

Click here to access article by Michael Hudson from Naked Capitalism.

Hudson, who is employed as an economics professor at University of Missouri (Kansas City, MO), must not challenge capitalism overtly and directly. Nevertheless, I am amazed that he has gotten away with his more subdued criticisms of the system. For example, he must make less than blunt, mild statements like the following:

To implement a successful Green policy program, it thus is necessary to move beyond the environmental problem to take on a broad and wealthy array of vested interests. They will cite free-market ideology as justification for taking their money in the short run, without care for the weather disaster they are causing. That makes the task much more daunting, and also may limit the ideological appeal of a real Green program. 

Could he be writing that it is necessary for a successful Green policy program to replace capitalism with some system that doesn't reward a small minority of people to benefit from the exploitation of nature and people and, instead, is responsive to the needs of all people? 

PBS: Keeper of Official State Myths

Click here to access article by Bill Willers from Dissident Voice.

Willers's remarks about the prime role of PBS as gatekeeper and propagandist for the Deep State parallels my own experience after many years of watching the ad-free programming which is funded by major US corporations and the rich endowments of capitalists. Yes, they always thank "viewers like you", but I think the appeal to the public functions as a propaganda cover to legitimatize their programming. While corporate advertisers sponsor commercial programs to increase sales of their products, they also insure the future of the capitalist system by lavishly funding PBS.

He concludes with this summary statement:

American mainstream journalism is now a tapestry of lies of omission. PBS, however, is a standout in this area, because its prominent, “in depth” productions on Nova, American Experience and Frontline are considered widely to represent the best investigative journalism available. It is this reputation that places PBS above the networks in the public mind. As PBS has willfully avoided specific areas for exploration, and has excluded truths that a governmental power structure does not want aired, it has made itself a powerful tool in the rewriting of history.

Thus, not only ordinary adults of the present generation are influenced by these lies, but their children study these lies in history classes. The lies become a manufactured "reality".

(Have you noticed that so many dissident writers like Willers are retired from academia? This is because their academic careers, while they actively pursue such careers, are threatened if they don't support the Deep State's lies.)