Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, January 4, 2020

With the killing of a high ranking Iran official while visiting Iraq is a signal that the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire is now baring its fascist claws for all to see. Only diehard and thoroughly indoctrinated Americans and their sycophants across the world will be blind from seeing what the last capitalist empire is made of. No, not democracy or the rule of law, but the fascist style of mafia gangsters that capitalists have become. It appears that our capitalist masters have decided to use violence against their resisting enemies to prolong their rule and have abandoned their quest to overcome the more powerful environmental threats of nature. They know something that most of us do not: they cannot defeat nature. But it's a pity that we will go down with them.

These are today's posts mostly about our descent into the gangster world:

• US starts the Raging Twenties declaring war on Iran by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times.

• The murder of Qassem Soleimani and assassination as state policy by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

• OPCW leaks expose ‘criminal’ Syria cover-up — and US media is silent by Aaron Maté from The Grayzone. 

• Ruling class bereft of answers while catastrophic fires escalate across Australia by James Cogan from World Socialist Web Site.

• Few countries on track to meet Paris climate goals by Sarah Kennedy from Yale Climate Connections.

Are you sure you want to read today's posts? If you do, these are my recommendations for today: Friday, January 3, 2020

Iranian crisis:  (I don't know where, but in one of the many articles I read refers to an Iraqi group by the name of Kataeb Hezbollah. Michelle Greenstein explains (from RT) what she knows about this group.)

• US assassinates top Iranian general as 4,000 troops readied for Iraq intervention by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

• U.S. Will Come To Regret Its Assassination of Qassim Soleimani by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.  

• Iran says US crossed ‘red lines’ by assassinating Qassem Soleimani from Al-Masdar Al-‘Arabi (The Arab Source). 

• US Assassination Of Top Iranian Military Official May Ignite World War by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (You should know what PMF refers to.)

• Fear of a Major Mideast War by Joe Lauria from Consortium News.

• Angry Iranians rally in huge numbers to call for revenge from PressTV (Iran). 

• Iran Leader vows 'harsh revenge' following assassination of Gen. Soleimani from PressTV (Iran).

• Irreplaceable General: Will war in the Middle East follow the death of Soleimani? from United World (based in Turkey). 

Other posts that may interest you:

• Turkish Parliament Approves Invasion of Libya from Internationalist 360°.

• Libya: The Battle for Tripoli Enters its Final Days originally from Al Arab but translated and posted on Internationalist 360°.

• The Crisis in Mediterranean from Defend Democracy Press. 

• How the US was hoist by its own petard in Iraq and the wishful thinking of its thinktanks. By Elijah J Magnier from his weblog.

• The Dangers of Privatized Intelligence by Joyce Nelson CounterPunch.

• Why Is Wall Street the Only Industry in America With Access to the Fed’s Endless Money Machine? by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.  

• Assange and Manning: The Slow Execution of the Voices of Freedom by Massoud Nayeri from Global Research. 

• ‘US is torturing Chelsea Manning’: Top UN official says her treatment is ‘cruel and degrading’ from RT.

• Chelsea Manning should be a hero – Galloway on UN support for Whistleblower a 7:12m video from RT. 

Capitalism's ongoing degradation of our home planet Earth:

• ‘Insect apocalypse’ poses risk to all life on Earth, conservationists warn by Damian Carrington from Defend Democracy Press.

• Australia’s Angry Summer: This Is What Climate Change Looks Like from Defend Democracy Press. 

• Atlantic current could falter before 2100 by Tim Radford from Climate News Network. (This conservative website always underestimates the acceleration of climatic events, in my opinion.)

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

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

• Washington’s Xinjiang smear

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

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, January 1, 2020

• Full-Spectrum Fubar by Paul Edwards from CounterPunch.

• These Charts Show Why the Fed Is Still in a Panic Over the Repo Loan Market by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• Putin Reminds the West: Those Who Ignore History Are Doomed to Repeat it by Matthew Ehret from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Note: Putin's understanding of history is absolutely correct.)

• The Left is Dying Because it’s Turned Into a Bonfire of Vanities by Australian Umair Haque from Eudaimonics. (Note: I think Patrice Greanville, editor, is absolutely correct in his note prefacing the re-posted article in The Greanville Post.)

• Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’ from Defend Democracy Press. 

• Allseas will not resume work on Nord Stream II project. Germany miffed, but will do nothing. Gazprom subsidiary will finish it. A translated re-post originally from Deutsche Welle, a mainstream German publication, on Fort Russ News.

Examples of what I think are "grasping at straws" in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire:

• Bank of England unveils climate stress test by Kieran Cooke from Climate News Network. 

• The super-cool materials that send heat to space by XiaoZhi Lim from Nature.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, December 31, 2019

• What we're told about ISIS is a lie (full show) reported by Michele Greenstein on the Rick Sanchez program from RT. Although guest-speakers on this program engage in rapid-fire delivery of their comments, Greenstein focuses on the Deep State and its propaganda organs, and as such I view the first 20:10 minutes as essential viewing.

• US Embassy in Iraq evacuated amid angry protests over airstrike on PMU from PressTV (Iran).

• As Honduras Collapses, Its People are Forced to Flee by Laura Carlsen from CounterPunch.

• Congress Just Passed Nightmare Legislation that Strips Trillions in Wealth from the Middle Class by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

• Bolivian Vassals Are Merely Aping Their Imperial Masters by Stephen Karganovic from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Police in Hong Kong Brutalized by Rioters While Attacked by the Western Press by Andre Vltchek from Dissident Voice. 

• ‘I’m slowly dying here’: ‘Sedated’ Assange tells friend during Christmas Eve call from UK prison as health concerns mount from RT.

• Fires create hellish conditions across Australia by Mike Head from World Socialist Web Site.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, December 30, 2019

• Social Media and Social Control: How Silicon Valley Serves the US State Department by Morgan Artyukhina from Mint Press News.

• Beating the Western Media Blockade: Ideas, Infrastructure, Solidarity by Jorge Capelán and Stephen Sefton from Internationalist 360°.

• The class war election by Des Freedman from CounterFire (Britain).

Two posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, December 29, 2019

• Chronicles of a fading-out civilization from Maize.

• On giving up hope by Jeppe Dyrendom Graugaard from Pattern Which Connects.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, December 28, 2019

• America, Where Great Literature Kicked the Bucket by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook. 

• China detaining millions of Uyghurs? Serious problems with claims by US-backed NGO and far-right researcher ‘led by God’ against Beijing by Ajit Singh and Max Blumenthal from The Grayzone.

• From Colluding With Hitler Against the USSR to an Anti-Hitler Coalition by Yuriy Rubtsov from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Note: You might also be interested in my commentary that I wrote for a post entitled "Countdown to 'Full Spectrum Dominance'")

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, December 27, 2019

• Limited Hangout: A Deep State Psyops Few Know About by Guy Crittenden from Solarian.

• We Are the Ones Who Will Awaken the Dawn by Vijay Prashad from The Tricontinental.

• Goldman Sachs Federally-Insured Bank Loses $1.2 Billion in Interest Rate Derivative Bets by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, December 26, 2019

• End-of-life anxiety and finding meaning in a collapsing climate by Leonie Joubert from Our Burning Planet (aka Daily Maverick--New Zealand) (Note: I didn't know what to do about this post because this website blocks access to those computers who block ads. Another website you can access the article is Living Resilience, but one can't access the links in the latter website. I have ad blocking software on my primary browser; so to access such articles from blocking sites, I have downloaded a second web browser which I use to access articles on such websites and don't load any ad blocking software to the browser. That way I don't have to remember to re-activate or mess with my ad blocking software on my primary browser. Incidentally, the ads on Our Burning Planet are not obnoxiously all over the article as in more commercial websites.)

• The Amazon at a Tipping Point by Robert Hunziker from CounterPunch.

• Trump and the Stock Market Are the Winners in the Fed’s Repo Loan Binge; Here’s the Losers by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

• Banking Nature, a 1:26:39 video posted on Thought Maybe. (I thank an activist, Caren, for this recommendation.) 

• Planetary arson and amplifying feedbacks: No alternative to CO2 drawdown by Andrew Glikson, an Earth and climate scientist, posted on Arctic News.

Sanctions, Security and the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline

Click here to access article by Binoy Kampmark from OffGuardian. 

This is huge. And I think it is the beginning of the end for the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. European politicos are logically adamant about securing cheaper energy from Russia to fuel its profit-making industries, and they don't mind smacking the Empire (see this and this) to secure this energy. US sanctions against Europe will only increase the independence of Europe from the core Empire which includes Britain. I also think that Eric Zuesse is correct when he argues that "UK’s Tory Victory Likely to Bind U.S. & UK against Europe & Asia". 

However I can't go along with his elaborate argument that racism which is in the history of the Britain Empire accounts for this. Zuesse is a social-democrat and must find a way to justify this turn of events--see his remarks related to his statement "That’s not what capitalism was supposed to be". Racism was very prevalent around the turn of the century till late 1930s. But it has been diminishing in the post-war era as a useful divide and conquer weapon of the Empire's capitalist ruling classes (against workers) as color minorities have increased in population (customers) throughout the Empire. Anti-immigrant sentiment is now used in place of racism or as a substitute for racism.

So, what comes next? Either the Empire will execute an all-out attack against Russia, China, and Iran or the Earth's habitat will no longer support human life, or both. We ordinary people are "screwed" one way or another.

How the US Created the Cold War

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Washington's Blog.

Unfortunately, the false history of WWII has been written by the ruling classes of the current US/Anglo/Zionist Empire through their well-paid propaganda agents throughout institutions of the Empire. In contrast, Zuesse offers a valuable source of the real truth, but his insights are limited by his social-democratic political orientation. 

This article (not the article posted in Strategic Culture Foundation--an edited version that left out his statement about "capitalism"--cleared up a number of questions I had about Eric Zuesse, the author. I have written several (at least) articles complaining about his use of the feudal term "aristocracy" instead of "ruling class" in his numerous articles. I saw this as reflecting his indoctrination in capitalist views mostly influenced by many years of education in US schools that he obviously had experienced. I was not wrong. In this article he clearly defines himself as a "progressive" by which he means his commitment to social democracy, a subset of capitalist ideologies, as illustrated by what has existed in the Scandinavian countries particularly after WWII when they had elaborate social welfare programs constructed on top of capitalist economies. Also, he is an admirer of FDR who saw the necessity of more elaborate welfare programs to preserve capitalism through the Great Depression. I gathered this from several paragraphs in the article such as:

Even other parts of that post-FDR system, such as the IMF, have served as siphons from publics around the world into the bank-accounts of the U.S. aristocracy and of its allied aristocracies. That’s not what capitalism was supposed to be. [Really?]

 And another quote:

Those weren’t “socialist” countries; they were dictatorial socialist (i.e., communist) countries, as opposed to democratic socialist (i.e., progressive) countries such as in Scandinavia — the proper term for what the Soviet alliance was is “communist,” not “socialist” — and there was a very big difference between the Scandinavian countries, versus the communist countries (though the U.S. regime wants to slur one by the other so as to sucker fools against democratic socialism — progressivism).

In other words, his "progressivism" is social democratic. He evidently believes that capitalism could be compatible with a sustainable Earth and that it could remain peaceful and just in spite of abundant contrary evidence throughout the relatively short history of capitalism.

Of further interest to me was a link in this article that brought me to an article in a publication that is followed by a section of the ruling class. This was published in Foreign Policy and entitled "The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did" that added a great deal of clarity regarding the use of atomic bombs on Japan as well as the budding Empire's intentions toward the Soviet Union.

Zuesse's contributions to the geopolitical realities of our world are essential, but what isn't essential is his left-liberal views (capitalism can be reformed, his use of "aristocracy" instead of "ruling class", etc.) about these realities. 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, December 20, 2019

• Capitalism and the Limits of Greening by Carl Boggs from CounterPunch.

• Corbyn was our Father Gapon. They have yet to meet our Lenin by John Wight from his weblog. (Note: you will need to know what "PLP" means.)

• US-China (Still Unsigned) Phase 1 Trade Deal by Jack Rasmus from his weblog.

• After addicting US to opioids, they’re selling cure. Mollye Barrows joins Rick Sanchez on his RT program to share her research. 

• The War on Terror - The Plot to Rule the Middle East. Bonnie Faulkner interviews Christopher Bollyn on her one hour program Guns and Butter which is carried live from WBAI in New York City and several affiliated stations across the Pacific Network. Her program was banned last year from KPFA in Berkeley, California (see this and this).

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, December 19, 2019

• COP25: Never have so many governments done so little for so many by Pete Dolack from his weblog Systematic Disorder.

• Extinction in 2020? from Arctic News.

• Biosphere Collapse? by Robert Hunziker from CounterPunch.

• Indo-Pak Nuclear Confrontation: First Use Policy and the Race Towards Armageddon by N.D. Jayaprakash from CounterPunch.

• Washington’s Refined Art of Torturing China May Ignite a War by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook. (Note: I found striking similarities in travel experiences with that of the author who is nominally an American journalist (in essence a citizen of the world). I experienced the same phenomenon in my short trip to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in about 1983 that he experienced in his travels in Russia in the early years of Yeltsin rule and more recently in China: the notable effect of Western propaganda on the citizens of Russia and China.)

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, December 18, 2019

• The News Churn Memory Hole: How The MSM Lies Even When Telling The Truth by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (Note: She sounds exasperated, but keeps plugging away at exposing the truth in the face off overwhelming presence of fake news and gaslighting (def.) furnished by corporate media. Other individual voices have tried to do the same--click on links to access their latest efforts: like satirist C.J. Hopkins and humorists like Lee Camp and Jimmy Dore; truth tellers like Bernard of Moon of Alabama, Eric Zuesse, Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Abby Martin; whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, and persecuted whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Chelsea/Bradley Manning. But nothing seems to change.) 

• When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job by John H. Richardson from Esquire.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, December 16, 2019

• Who is responsible for the climate crisis? by Jason Moore from Maize. (Note: one of my "best posts")

• Glacial melt creates Andes time bomb by Kieran Cooke from Climate News Network.

• COP25 video: Messages from climate marchers to politicians by Josh Gabbatiss from Carbon Brief.

•  No Justification For The Existence of Any Kind of Charter School by Shawgi Tell from Dissident Voice.

Note to readers: Change of policy

Many times in the past I've made clear that humans face two fundamental threats to their existence: one from a catastrophic nuclear war brought on by mostly the transnational capitalist class in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire; and two, a longer range problem due to the operations of the capitalist system which is well on its way to destroying our ecosystem that supports humans and so many other species. Previously I have limited all posts to one month from the current date, however because the second threat to our human existence moves more slowly (although it is picking up speed due to its accelerating momentum), I've decided to remove this requirement from posts related to this general subject.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, December 15, 2019

• Dr Peter Carter | Expert IPPC Reviewer | COP25 from Extinction Rebellion via YouTube.

• New Study: Greenland is melting seven times faster than 30 years ago. A post from Just Have a Think via YouTube.

• “The conversation we need to have with our children about climate change” by Jeppe Dyrendom Graugaard (Denmark) from his weblog Refiguring.

• COP25 video: Messages from climate marchers to politicians by Josh Gabbatiss from Carbon Brief (based in Britain).

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, December 13, 2019

Early news and commentary on yesterday's British elections

• How Boris Johnson’s election gamble paid off by Elizabeth Piper from Reuters (a news service mostly owned by the British ruling class).

• Jeremy Corbyn: ‘I will not lead Labour at next election’ from BBC.

• Campaigners demand law banning political lies as think-tank warns 'disinformation is becoming normalised' in elections by Cahal Milmo from Inews.

• National (counter) Revolution wins over Radical Reformism, Neocons win over Globalisers, War wins over Peace from Defend Democracy Press.

• Someone Interfered In The UK Election, And It Wasn’t Russia by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Corbyn’s Defeat has slain the Left’s Last Illusion by Jonathan Cook from his weblog. (The best analysis in my opinion.)

• UK's Johnson wins parliamentary majority, Corbyn to stand down from PressTV (Iran).

• Corbyn Is the Lesser Evil from Russia Insider.

Other commentary and news:

• In its anti-‘Medicare for All’ push, the health insurance industry pulls from an old playbook from The Conversation. 

• Award-Winning Journalist Vanessa Beeley Faces “Deplatforming” at Six Canadian Venues by Michael Welch from Global Research (based in Canada). 

• Media bias: Why Putin-Ukraine deal gets no coverage from Rick Sanchez's show on RT America.

Two cynical videos for our entertainment in the last days of our species for Thursday, December 12, 2019

• MSNBC’s Fake Concern For The Climate Crisis, a 7:50m video from Lee Camps show Redacted Tonight via YouTube.

• Obama/Bush/Trump Lied Repeatedly About Afghan War-- Documents Reveal, a 27:04m video from The Jimmy Dore Show via YouTube.