Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, May 16, 2020

• In defence of conspiracy theories (and why the term is a misnomer) by David Coady from The Conversation.

• No Lockdowns: The Terrifying Polio Pandemic of 1949-52 by Jeffrey A. Tucker from American Institute for Economic Research. (Note: I remember well the history of the polio epidemic which is reported accurately in this article.)

• The “TRACE” Act—Is This the World We Want? by Mary Holland from Children's Health Defense.

• MAJOR: 27 Million MORE Americans Now Without Health Insurance Due to Lock-down Job loss by Drago Bosnic from FRN (Fort Russ News which is based in Serbia).

• An economic tsunami could soon thrust half a billion people into extreme poverty by Kate Linthicum, Nabih Bulos, and Ana Ionova from Defend Democracy Press.

• Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic, America’s Billionaires Thrive and Prosper by Lawrence Wittner from Dissident Voice.

Financially, they are doing remarkably well.  According to the Institute for Policy Studies, between March 18 and April 28, as nearly 30 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits, the wealth of America’s 630 billionaires grew by nearly 14 percent.  During April 2020 alone, their wealth increased by over $406 billion, bringing it to $3.4 trillion.  According to estimates by Forbes, the 400 richest Americans now possess as much wealth as held by nearly two-thirds of American households combined.

• China’s International Solidarity Aid to the World During the Corona Pandemic by
  Stansfield Smith from Dissident Voice.

• Truth in America R.I.P. by Paul Craig Roberts from his weblog.

• Why Capitalism Can’t Cure Global Pandemics by Prabir Purkayastha from Citizen Truth.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, May 14, 2020

• Professor Dolores Cahill Debunking the Corona Narrative from the channel Computing Forever (on YouTube) and posted on Gumshoe News that is based in Australia. (Note: More and more medical doctors and scientists are coming forward to challenge the pervasive fear campaign on major media. We have heard from the Bakersfield, California doctors here (which was censored on YouTube) and here, the Dr. Ioannidis of Stanford University here, and others; but now we hear from the highly qualified Prof. Cahill who thoroughly debunks the fear campaign. If you wish to skip the introduction and Cahill's opening remarks about more details regarding her qualifications, you may want to start listening at 9:08m.)

• COVID CHAOS: A Closer Look At Coronavirus Testing from 21st Century Wire.

• UKC News: COVID Lockdown ‘Stop Light’ System, Evidence of Gov’t Using MSM for PsyOps from 21st Century Wire. 

• Video: Dr. Judy Mikovits Exposes Dr. Fauci Contradicting Statements On Hydroxychloroquine posted by Joaquin Flores from FRN (Fort Russ News).

• Cuomo: Slashing and Privatizing Education is “The New Normal” by Francesca Gomes from Left Voice.

• Wall Street Will Likely Be the Only Winners in the Pandemic Housing Crisis by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News. 

• And They're Gone! The Obscenity of Dr. Fauci's Jobs-Mageddon by David Stockman posted on LewRockwell. (Note: I've published from this site because Stockman's website is behind a paywall. "Mageddon" as defined by Wikipedia.)

• How The Trump Administration Inserts 'Blame China' Propaganda Into Main Stream Media by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama.

• Psychological warfare misses its mark: China is winning the Covid-19 media war by Orçun Göktürk from United World (based in Turkey).  

• American Weapons Manufacturers Are Thriving Even as the US Economy Suffers by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, May 13, 2020

• Who’s in a Catch-22? by Joseph Natoli from CounterPunch. (Note: He uses "pace" in this sentence, "The escape valve from this cynical scenario is broadcasting our national self-proclaimed humanitarian priorities, pace Wall Street." to mean "with due reference to", a preposition.)

• CDC Fudging Numbers to Create Medical Tyranny & Hysteria – Coronavirus and Dodgy Death Numbers by F. William Engdahl from FRN (Fort Russ News).

• Holding Healthcare Hostage: The Making of a Ventilator Crisis by Tony Cartalucci from his weblog Land Destroyer Report.

• Lock Step – The eerily prescient pandemic scenario of the Rockefeller Foundation by Norbert Häring from his weblog Money and More.

• The U.S. Response to Covid-19 Has Lavished Wealth on the Rich by Miles Kampf-Lassin from In These Times.

• The Fed Hasn’t Spent a Dime Yet for Main Street Versus $735 Billion for Wall Street by Pam and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• YouTube CEO Admits Users Don’t Like Boosting of “Authoritative” Mainstream Channels, But They Do it Anyway by Paul Joseph Watson from Summit News. 

• The mind-blowing history at Fort Detrick by Ceng Jing from CGTN (China).

• How Big Wireless Lobbied Governments to Build 5G For Citizen Data Collection and Surveillance by Derrick Broze from Mint Press News.

• REVEALED: How a British-backed media operation tried to turn Alawites against Assad by Ian Cobain, Harun al-Aswad, and Mustafa Abu Sneineh from Middle East Eye. 

• State Control is not Socialism from Libcom. (My reaction: This is a question of which class controls the state.)

• ‘We are the vaccine against unilateralism’: Non-Aligned Movement gathers in Venezuela to resist dictatorship of dollar by Anya Parampil from The Grayzone.

Fake leaders and ineffective movements (final edited version)

Edited for clarity at 8:17 AM, 6 PM, & 7:28 PM (all CT) 5/13/2020, and 2:37 PM 5/15/2020.  While I may continue to do some minor editing to correct errors of spelling, etc., this is a final version.

Note: My analysis will focus on Americans because I have an intimate knowledge of them having grown up in the USA, reading widely from original sources, and having studied American society in sociology classes.

By Ron Horn 

Since WWII the US capitalist ruling class began the construction of an empire under the control of transnational capitalists from what was left of the British Empire, European countries, and later they added Israel which was founded by right-wing European Zionists. Much of Latin America has always been dominated by the USA. In the process of building this empire, the new empire-builders of the ruling class, by using manipulative methods to shape public opinion, had deleterious effects on nearly everyone in the USA. They accomplished this by the ongoing application of comprehensive propaganda and proliferation of ideology that appealed to the capitalists' instincts of consumption and acquisitiveness. The new leaders of the ruling class corrupted both the consciousness of ordinary workers as well as educated people who were recruited to manage public opinion. The conditions of the post-war period in which the USA had the only industrialized economy that was still intact, enabled the ruling class used this dominance, to spread the themes of material and other capitalist values throughout all institutions--education, media, entertainment, etc., not only throughout the US society, but throughout most of the Empire they were constructing. This false consciousness, in turn, left workers without a real political consciousness that was necessary to confront and fight against the ruling class's exploitation. But the new fascist ruling class didn't stop there.

They initially purged Hollywood and educational institutions of people who had any socialist/communist ideas, and went on to develop very sophisticated methods to promote false movements and fake leaders that led nowhere by co-opting these leaders and movements to serve their fundamental interests of profit and power. Recent such examples we find in the Green Movement and individuals like Sen. Bernie Sanders. I'm going to argue in this paper that liberals like Michael Moore have also contributed to this effort. I want to warn the few genuine activists that in spite of their anti-capitalist rhetoric, these activists are fake, the movements which they lead, or contribute to, are ineffective, and why. 

The current US ruling class is worried about their recently suffered defeats in the Middle East, threats by the spectacular rise of the Chinese economy, and is presently tormented by the recognition of diminishing growth on a finite planet. Although they have not given up their quest to rule the world, the ruling class is currently in a dangerous defensive mode. Standing in their way are primarily China, Russia, Iran, and other nations that aspire to a multilateral world. The current US/British/Zionist Empire will continue their traditional offensive operations against these enemies, and create new methods in a desperate attempt to maintain their domination of the world as well as solving the new dilemma of continuing their capitalist operations on a finite planet. 

First, it is necessary to review a little history in order to understand the present problems confronting American society and its ruling class. The US ruling class of major capitalists was surprised by their success in rallying the American public behind the war effort in WWI by the use of propaganda. They subsequently saw that propaganda techniques were a vital component to shape public opinion to support the construction of an empire. Thus, after that horrific war the ruling class supported the efforts of propaganda experts like Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann went on to develop advanced techniques of propaganda. They promoted the study of what they called "public relations" which is the capitalist euphemism for propaganda.

Communist ideology was quite popular in Europe after WWII, but it posed a major threat to the new empire builders. The US ruling class used a combination of violence (see this and this) and propaganda to put down this threat. During this period within the USA, the capitalist ruling class launched an anti-communist crusade initially using the rabid anti-communist and pro-capitalist Winston Churchill who had an extensive history of fighting the Soviet Union after its socialist revolution in 1917. The Soviet Union represented a major threat as a successful alternative to the advanced capitalist nations of the world. (That said, I don't want to argue that the Soviet Union represented some kind of enlightened socialism because they were corrupted by a Stalinist-inspired bureaucracy that had long taken control of their nation.) The capitalist ruling class has since WWII concentrated on establishing a highly skilled and indoctrinated upper-middle-class (and throughout the the nations that they controlled) not only to advance their imperial agenda but to recruit people of this class as their ideological warriors to manage their ideological institutions against ordinary workers.

Initially, the new empire-builders used the existing loyal members in Congress against militant labor unions. They passed the Taft-Hartley Act which prevented unions from collaborating in a general strike that was so effective for workers during the 1930s. Then they cleansed the upper-middle class of all dissidents left-over from the Great Depression. To do this they first attacked Hollywood which was soon followed by the educational institution and government during the period known as McCarthyism. Finally, when the alcoholic and unstable Sen. McCarthy got around to attacking the army, the ruling class and President Eisenhower put a stop to it.

(During this period Koreans were trying to set up an independent state free of their old colonial oppressors from Japan. But the US didn't like what the Koreans were trying to do which they saw as too much inspired by communist/socialist ideas. The US used the weak United Nations as cover to intervene using primarily US forces to crush the communist tainted forces during the Korean War. Fortunately, China came to the rescue.)

For many decades the new ruling class continued to play on the threat of communism to the "American way of life" which was mostly defined by endless consumption and by vague notions of "freedom". The USA has been at war formally and informally ever since WWII to put down nations that were seen to establish socialism and those which would not serve US capitalist interests. They used anti-communist propaganda against their own people to engage in one war after another. But, after the Vietnam War the ruling class has used other types of threat-propaganda.

The anti-communist threat, which has never ceased, was followed by the War on Drugs (1971) to oppress largely African-Americans and poor Americans while the CIA, of the empire builders, profited from the drug trade. Then the first shock to the American psyche was carried out in 2001 with the false-flag operation of 9/11, shortly thereafter that the War on Terror was launched to further threaten Americans in order to mobilize them to support the ruling class project to invade one nation after another in the Middle East. And now we have the Coronavirus pandemic and the strategy of laying off all but essential workers, the ruling classes are destroying the lives of many workers--it is too soon to tell how many. Could this be another shock administered to American society and the world? Most detective investigations begin by asking the question: who benefits?  

Since WWII it is clear that propaganda has been used by empire-builders of the capitalist class to re-engineer all institutions--films, education, media, employment, etc. to serve capitalist interests, and education was one of their primary targets. Textbooks have been re-written and teachers, professors, and educational administrators have been carefully assigned to schools based on pro-capitalist ideological qualifications. Also, added to this was an infiltration of all media corporations initially by the CIA, and later by people who were thoroughly indoctrination in capitalist values and perspectives.

While the ruling capitalist class has its own well-hidden agenda to preserve their system, they will try to deceive and distract citizens using a whole range of psychological methods: media propaganda and management of news, re-writing the history of the USA and the world, and using false flag ops like 9/11 to shock the consciousness of their working classes. Vijay Prashad explains this process well in his analysis of hybrid wars and US imperialism. Using propaganda and indoctrination the ruling capitalist classes of this Empire, particularly of the USA, has now been rewarded with fabulous wealth and power never seen before in recorded history. To carry out this agenda they have used well-remunerated, highly trained and indoctrinated upper-middle-class workers.

Currently, most Americans are thoroughly brainwashed by these agents who have served the ruling class for many decades since WWII. This highly skilled upper-middle-class class has been tasked to supervise all institutions of our society. Many of them have "alternative" weblogs or write for anti-Empire weblogs, but they do not know the real history of capitalist oppression of workers before the 1930s and the administration of FDR (historian Eric Zuesse comes to mind). These liberals serve the ruling class at election time by dangling various reforms such as universal health care that appeal to the masses, too many of whom are grossly overweight, sickly, and otherwise unfit because they have been conditioned to a consumptive American lifestyle.

Regarding the recent film Planet of the Humans, I agree with John Steppling when he writes "The film ... becomes tantamount to a marketing campaign for depopulation ...". The capitalist class long ago knew about capitalism's imperative of growth in a finite planet. They explicitly wrote this in 1972 when they published the controversial booklet entitled "The Limits to Growth". They soon saw a backlash from numerous activist organizations with the charge that they were advocating depopulation, advocating the depopulation of useless (to them) all those people that didn't contribute to the profit and power that their beloved system supplied to them with such abundance. This film offers the same implied theme--depopulation. The ruling class, of course, don't want to explicitly say it, but they want a depopulation to be driven into our consciousness as a "force of nature", pandemics, etc. The ruling class really wants to rid the Earth of burdensome "useless eaters", introduce comprehensive surveillance a la Bill Gates and digital money in order to track people and other control benefits. A primary benefit of the current pandemic (to the ruling class) was to provide cover for the huge bailouts given to banks and heavily indebted corporations. Could the coronavirus, as a pure coincidence, serve all of these objectives and many secondary benefits?

Please don't misunderstand me by concluding that one of the problems isn't over-population. It is a fact that humans are adversely impacting the environment because there are too many of us. (This fact is in addition to capitalists producing too many unnecessary products by using fossil fuels in their obsessive search for profits.) But capitalists have allied themselves with organized religions for a number of reasons, and important reasons were, and are, to discourage or prohibit women from having abortions and using contraceptives. Thus, capitalist ruling classes always supported various Christian religious denominations that served these purposes (in addition to others). Capitalists saw an increasing population as a benefit to provide more consumers to provide more opportunities for profit. By capitalist ruling classes keeping much of the world in poverty, the only way poor people can survive into old age is to have many children which insured some of the latter would survive and take care of them into old age. This practice is a kind of social security for poor people.
 
Steppling, in his review of the film Planet of the Humans, is absolutely "spot-on" when he writes "... the essential and overriding two problems with this film can be generalized as an absence of class analysis, and an absent analysis of western Imperialism." In their film Moore and Gibbs, who because of the brainwashing that they have suffered growing up in America, "pulled the punches" of class analysis.

However Steppling fails to develop this criticism; instead, he succumbs to what is currently fashionable criticism by smearing Moore and Gibbs with racism--he often refers to the latter as "white guys". Racism has been practiced for centuries by the capitalist ruling class. We still see the harmful psychological effects today among many people: white people as well as people of color. Racism has been historically useful as an integral part of capitalism by separating workers into mutually antagonistic camps and justifying the wholesale slaughter of uncivilized "savages". But racism is the least of the sins committed in the film by Moore and Gibbs. The lack of class analysis is paramount. 

This taboo against class analysis has affected many American intellectuals. They may at most use words that suggest anti-capitalism, but their actions always stay safely within the capitalist framework so as not to annoy their keepers. Most have been so brainwashed by the many decades of propaganda and indoctrination that they think capitalism is like the sun--a fixed entity and an incontrovertible fact of nature.

More recently ruling class propagandists have used the divide and conquer strategy by promoting themes that promote conflicts between men and women and gay people and straight people. They have largely unsuccessful getting us to hate Russia with "Russiagate" propaganda; but because of the Coronavirus pandemic, they may be more successful in getting the American population to hate China.

The fundamental reason why US activists and revolutionary movements have not been effective, nor in the future will they be, is that they have been subject to a long and comprehensive process of capitalist propaganda and indoctrination. As a result, working people along with fake leaders are ignorant of American history and of the heinous effects of US actions on the rest of the world. They have been divided into mutually distrustful and hostile camps, brainwashed, obedient, distracted by vacuous entertainment, and unhealthy due to capitalist propaganda that would only allow them to be mere spectators in sports, and from a poor diet of cheap "fast foods" prepared for them by giant corporations. There is no reason to expect such people to lead or form an effective revolutionary movement. What we will see at most are pseudo movements and fake leaders who promise solutions to our many problems. We will probably need to look beyond the people of the US/British/Zionist Empire to see genuine leaders and revolutionary movements.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, May 7, 2020

• Can a Broke America Fight a Cold War With China? by Hal Brands from Bloomberg. 

My commentary: US/Anglo/Zionist Empire media corporations are full of stories that imply a new cold war, even a hot war, and they seem to be having some success. Just the other day I received in a mail a newspaper called The Epoch Times which I think was sent from Chicago. The headline and the front page was devoted to an article "How the Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World". My neighbor received the same newspaper. (That got me wondering about the financial backing for such a mailout.) This together with the increasing bellicose nature of "news" regarding China made me think that the ruling class was preparing for some conflict with China. I don't think that they have a hot war mind--but what? I thought: maybe it has something to do with money. The following links also suggested this: here, here, and here. Maybe the US could default on its huge debt to China and China could promote a global yaun to replace the US dollar.

• What It’s Like to Believe Everything the Media Tells You (MUST WATCH) from Anti-Empire. (Total parody, also see this.)

• Back to work? On OUR terms! by Susan Rosenthal from her weblog. (Note: I thank an activist for alerting me this article.)

I'm running short of time today, and have other obligations to attend to.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, May 6, 2020

• Corona Tyranny and Death by Famine by Peter Koenig from Dissident Voice. 

• Coronavirus and global US bio-laboratories around the world from United World (based in Turkey). 

The US and its allies have launched a massive information attack. The goal is to accuse China of spreading the virus, impose sanctions and other restrictions or use the threat of their imposition in a geopolitical struggle. It is possible that the US may use the situation as an excuse to refuse to pay its debt to China.

• US Government Fears China will Give Away COVID-19 Vaccine for Free by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News.

My commentary: In the land of capitalism giving stuff away for free is a sin against the system which places profit as the cornerstone of the system.

My only criticism of this article is that Macleod writes that the "government fears" this. What Americans must realize that the government is only a facade that serves a similar function as the facades of western towns do for the Hollywood film industry. While the latter facades are useful methods to reconstruct western towns of the 19th century, the government facade serves to hide the predatory capitalist ruling class behind a facade of "democracy", elections, a civil rights, rule of law, etc. This view of America has been engrained in US citizens by propaganda over centuries and in all institutions, and as a result we see the facade as real. The author should write that "the capitalist ruling class fears China will give away ....".

• TEXAS – The Cure for Corona – A Dose of Reality by Russell ‘Texas’ Bonner Bentley from FRN (Fort Russ News). (This article is about the deception game which is the favorite game played by the ruling class, but it's at our expense.)

• Nearly Half of US Adults in Credit Card Debt due to Lockdown by Drago Bosnic from FRN. 

• America’s Design Causes It to Fail the COVID-19 Challenge by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

My reaction (I only scanned it.) : This is a lengthy piece full of documentations that support his arguments.  Yet, I can't help but notice that Zuesse is having a harder time denying the class structure of American society, its ruling class, and the system that they derive from--capitalism. He refers to the ruling class as the "super-rich (the country’s actual dictators)" as if the system and its class structure had nothing to do with the "super-rich". He hints at revolution. So, this is progress. Zuesse may eventually turn out to be a consciousness raising agent that Lenin referred to in his document "What is to be done?" Let us hope so.

• Civil Liberty Vanishes by Craig Murray (Scotland) from his weblog.

• Venezuela: Two US Citizens Captured in Botched Coup Attempt from Venezuelan Analysis. (Note: You may also interested in these reports: here and here.)

• A Massive “COVID-19” Cover Up Is Underway & ‘US Mercenaries’ Caught In Venezuelan Coup Attempt by Ryan Cristián from The Last American Vagabond. (Note: This is only the lead-off report of the attempted coup in Venezuela. This report is only a part of The Daily Wrap Up in which Cristián reports on a variety of news reports. If you have time to listen to the entire program, an hour and 40 minutes, I recommend it and other of their posts; but I do not have the time and immunology expertise to post them on my website.)

• Help Us Cover the Julian Assange Story from Consortium News. (Note: For those of you who ignore the fate of Assange, please read another article about this victim of the Empire's oppression.)

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, May 5, 2020

• For the Workers of the World the Pandemic is Based on Inequality by Pasqualina Curcio from Resumen. (Note: I thank an American activist for this post.)

• The Disconnect Between the Stock Market and the Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives by Hamilton Nolan from In These Times.

• The Sleeping Giant by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (Note: This is a political allegory. See if you can identify the referents to the characters. Also notice that it is unfinished. What will the giant do the next time he wakes up? Only the future will tell. But you are a tiny cell of that giant, or should be, as an informed activist. What will you do?)

• Now more than ever, supporting abolition of the debt is a priority! by Brigitte Marti from Women in and Beyond the Global. 

• The scarring by Michael Roberts from his weblog. (Note: This is how a Marxist economist looks at recessions, and now we are in the "mother of all recessions".)

• COVID-19 “CARES Act” Bankrolls AlI Post-Human Education by John Klyczek from Dissident Voice. (Note: The author argues that the CARES Act promotes the future of education. Learn what this future is like.)

• Only the Poor Starve: Hunger in the Time of Covid by Graham Peebles from Dissident Voice. 

My reaction: I hope he is right about his optimistic future:

Consistent with the new time we are moving into, a shift in collective consciousness is taking place among large numbers of people all over the world. To accommodate this shift, this new awareness that is slowly emerging, new ways of thinking, new institutions and structures are badly needed, including crucially a radically overhauled socio-economic system. A flexible evolving model anchored in certain Principles of Goodness: Unity, sharing and justice.

This common-sense trinity is interdependent and encourages values of cooperation and understanding, responsibility and tolerance.

• Towards A New World Order? The Global Debt Crisis and the Privatization of the State by Prof Michel Chossudovsky from his weblog Global Research.

• LEAKED: Wall Street Told Investors Not To Invest In Cures! featuring Lee Camp (via YouTube) of the Redacted Tonight show. Camp illustrates the logic of capitalism regarding your health. 

• As Death Toll Increases Blame China Campaign Intensifies by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama (Germany). (Note: He provides much evidence that our ruling class are using this pandemic to prepare us for war with China.) 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, May 4, 2020

• Americans Can Handle an Open Discussion on Vaccines—RFK, Jr. Responds to Criticism from His Family by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. from Children's Health Defense. (Note: This was posted on August 15, 2019.)

My commentary: In this nine-month-old post, Kennedy proves with considerable documentation that many government agencies and leaders of such agencies, especially those that are directly concerned with drugs, have been co-opted by Big Pharma (the pharmaceutical industry) with "ownership" of stocks in the industry. Thus, they are heavily compromised by pursuing policies that increase their capital gains of stocks which they own in the pharmaceutical industry.

Now during this pandemic we learn that citizens like Bill Gates who have used his $-billions by helping to fund agencies like the World Health Organization (WHO) which is an agency of the United Nations and oversees drug policies worldwide. Furthermore, there are many other involved in the government's leadership who are heavily compromised.

Yes, I know that this is shock to some of you to learn that the capitalist "virus" has spread throughout government agencies that are officially responsible for the safety of drugs that you consume. But what you may not be aware of is that the capitalist virus has spread throughout all institutions of our society. The only remedy is revolution.

• Fear and Loathing of the COVID-19 Economy by Kurt Nimmo from Global Research.

• The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis Is Here by Matt Taibbi from Anti-Empire. 

• Perspectives on the Pandemic | The Bakersfield Doctors from Journeyman Pictures (via YouTube).

Perspectives on the Pandemic - Episode 6: When Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Antin Massihi held a press conference on April 22nd about the results of testing they conducted at their urgent care facilities around Bakersfield, California, the video, uploaded by a local ABC news affiliate, went viral. After reaching five million views, YouTube took it down on the grounds that it "violated community standards." We followed up with the doctors to determine what was so dangerous about their message. What we discovered were reasonable and well-meaning professionals whose voices should be heard.

• Virus of Mass Destruction by C. J. Hopkins from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc. 

• JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Fossil Fuel Industry Get Bailed Out Under Fed’s “Main Street” Lending Program by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• Very High Greenhouse Gas Levels from Arctic News. 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, May 3, 2020

• Why Sweden Succeeded While Others Failed by Mike Whitney from The Unz Review.

• This RFK, Jr. Interview Is Very Significant from Edward Curtin's weblog Behind the Curtain. (Note: The heavily censored nephew of the assassinated John Kennedy is provided a (over two hours) platform to express his view on Big Pharma, a highly profitable industry, and the harm they are doing to our children and our wallets. I don't like to post such lengthy interviews (I have not listened to all of it yet), but I believe this post is justified because this industry illustrates the logic of capitalism. I agree with Curtin that the interview is "very significant", but I don't agree that the virus escaped from a lab in China--that conclusion will await further evidence to support that inference. Listen to his sensible arguments and learn why he is so heavily censored.) 

• Why You Should Oppose The Censorship Of David Icke (Hint: It’s Got Nothing To Do With Icke) by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (Note on 5/5/2020: I erred by providing the wrong link to this article. Corrected link.)

• Public Opinion, Not Scientific Advice, Is What Is Keeping Us in Lockdown by Daniel Hannan from Anti-Empire.

(Note: I have run out of time.)

Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, May 2, 2020

• May Day 2020 from SubMedia, a section of Vimeo, presents a 2:20m commemoration of this year's May Day. 

• May 1st, 2020 - 1.6 billion workers face potential unemployment globally from RT (via YouTube). 

Caleb Maupin is a widely acclaimed speaker, writer, journalist, and political analyst. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and in Latin America. He was involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement from its early planning stages, and has been involved many struggles for social justice. He is an outspoken advocate of international friendship and cooperation, as well 21st Century Socialism.

• COVID-19: Questionable Coronavirus Evolution in Biosafety Level 4 Labs by Dady Chery from News Junkie Post.

• Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist Who Discovered HIV Says Coronavirus Was Created In Laboratory by Paul Anthony Taylor from Dr. Wrath Health Foundation.

• Gun-toting protesters in US occupy streets amid virus chaos from PressTV (Iran). (My reaction: I can sympathize with the protestors who oppose the elimination of their jobs. But they need to raise their political consciousness to see that the present stage of capitalism is responsible for this dilemma, and work for efforts to establish a real socialist economy, an economy under their control and serves their interests.)

• Funeral Directors in COVID-19 Epicenter Doubt Legitimacy of Deaths Attributed to Pandemic, Fear Numbers are 'Padded' by James O'Keefe from his website Project Veritas. 

• Edge of Extinction: The Trifecta of Overheating by Guy McPherson from his weblog Nature Bats Last (via YouTube). 

• Michael Moore's 'Planet of the Humans' documentary peddles dangerous climate denial by Dana Nuccitelli from Yale Climate Connections.

• Criminal Big-Pharma Put in Charge of Covid-19 "Vaccine" by Tony Cartalucci from his weblog Land Destroyer Report.

• Biden Is Everything The Democrats Are: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

My commentary: Johnstone argues that the ultimate use of capitalism, the generator of wealth for the "owners" of productive enterprises, is secondary to power that they wish to impose over the populations that capitalist ruling class control. This is in contrast to what I have argued many times in the past that profit and power are essentially two sides of the same coin. Reading her arguments, I am reconsidering my position. She offers examples where profit is trumped by power/control, which is the essence of fascism--the end stage of capitalism.

• The Truth Behind “Refrigerated Morgue Truck” Stories — Or How to Manufacture Mass Hysteria by Burying the Details by C. J. Hopkins from Anti-Empire.

• "Conclusion" from "The Breaking Of The Corporate Media Monopoly" by David Edwards, a co-editor, from Media Lens. (Note: Because this is from a British website and presents arguments from British media and society, I am reproducing below the last segment ("Conclusion") from this 2017 article which I think is most critically important for American workers to read. The full post is here.)

Conclusion – The Corporate Media Monopoly Is Broken

One week before the election, the Guardian reported that ‘a new force is shaping the general election debate’:

‘Alternative news sites are run from laptops and bedrooms miles from the much-derided “Westminster bubble” and have emerged as one of the most potent forces in election news sharing, according to research conducted for the Guardian by the web analytics company Kaleida.’

These alternative articles were ‘being shared more widely online than the views of mainstream newspaper commentators’. Remarkably, ‘Nothing from the BBC, the Guardian or the Daily Mail comes close’ to the most-shared alternative media pieces. The Canary reported that it had doubled the number of visitors to its site to six million in May. A story by Evolve Politics, run by just two people, was shared 55,000 times on Facebook and was read at least 200,000 times. These websites ‘explicitly offer a counter-narrative to what they deride as the “MSM” or mainstream media’.

Indeed, the evidence is now simply overwhelming – the 100-year big business monopoly of the mass media has been broken.

It is obvious that the right-wing press – the Daily Mail, the Sun, The Times and Telegraph – play a toxic role in manipulating the public to favour elite interests. But many people are now realising that the liberal press is actually the most potent opponent of progressive change. Journalist Matt Kennard commented:

‘The Guardian didn’t get it “wrong”. It is the mouthpiece of a liberal elite that is financially endangered by a socialist program.’

In truth, the Guardian sought to destroy Corbyn long before he became Labour leader (see here and here). This means that it did not target him because he was an ineffective leader imperilling Labour. And this hostility was no aberration, not a well-intentioned mistake that they got ‘wrong’. To this day, the Guardian remains Blair’s great cheerleader, despite his awesome crimes, just as it was Hillary Clinton and Obama’s cheerleader, and just as it was Bill Clinton’s before them.

While employing a handful of compromised fig leaves, the Guardian has ruthlessly smeared anyone who has sought to challenge the status quo: Julian Assange, Russell Brand, Hugo Chavez, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, John Pilger, George Galloway and many others. It has also been complicit in the great war crimes of Iraq, Libya and Syria – accepting fake government justifications for war at face value, ignoring expert sources who made a nonsense of the claims, and propagandising hard for the West’s supposed ‘responsibility to protect’ the nations it so obviously seeks to destabilise and exploit.

In our view, the corporate journalists who should be treated with most caution are precisely those celebrated as ‘dissidents’. Corporate media give Owen Jones, George Monbiot, Paul Mason and others immense outreach to draw 100,000s of progressives back to a filtered, corporate version of the world that favours established power and stifles progressive change. Above all, as Jonathan Cook says, the unwritten rule is that they will not speak out on the inherent structural corruption of a corporate media system reporting on a world dominated by corporations.

This is crucial, because, as last week confirms, and as we have been arguing for 16 years, if change begins anywhere, it begins with the public challenging, exposing and rejecting, not just the right-wing press, but the corporate media as a whole, the ‘liberal-left’ very much included.

In the last month, we witnessed astonishing numbers of people challenging all media, all the time on every bias – we have never seen anything like it. The young, in particular, are learning that they do not need highly-paid, privileged corporate employees to tell them what to think.

We don’t need to tolerate a corporate-filtered view of the world. We can inform ourselves and each other, and we can do so with very much more honesty, courage and compassion than any corporate journalist. If there is one message from last week, it’s a simple one – dump the corporate media; all of it.

Posts that I especially recommend today and some commentaries: Thursday, April 30, 2020

• Public Health and Private Profits Under COVID-19 Pandemic by Yves Smith from Naked Capitalism. 

• Dr. Ioannidis on Results of Coronacirus Studies from Journey Pictures via YouTube. (Note: Stanford University professor Dr. John Ioannidis reports on data from various parts of the world and their implications for coping with such a virulent virus as Covid-19.)

My comments: According to early data from this higlyly qualified source and other competent sources, Covid-19 is not more fatal than influenza. You should behave rationally to protect yourself from suffering from this virus. However, if you believe what media corporations, which have a record of spreading lies, are telling you that you should fear for your lives, then I have several fine bridges to sell you.

I am 84 years old with chronic bronchitis, and I see myself as extremely vulnerable to this virus. Thus, I am observing carefully all social distance advisories as should all people in my condition. (Edited comment for clarity of my views based on date between 4:30 PM and 6:45 PM CT.)

• Latest Stimulus Screwing Of America Explained w/Dylan Ratigan from The Jimmy Dore Show (via YouTube).

• Douglas Valentine Interview - How The COVID-19 Police State Was Born In Vietnam conducted by Whitney Webb in a 1:20:25 interview posted on The Last American Vagabond. (Note: I have only had the time to listen to some of this one hour plus interview. I will listen to it in full later.)

Next day commentary: I don't see that Valentine's thesis that the ruling class used the Phoenix Program, which they used in Vietnam, has been used to suppress dissent in the USA. Our masters have used a variety of sources to increase their control of society, but they have done this while perserving the ideology of a "democratic" society that has a number of civil liberties. The use of propaganda through the infiltration of media corporations was primarily applied in the USA and to lessor extent to the European countries of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Vietnam's society was not the same as US's society. Thus, they have used a variety of means, including their experience in Vietnam, to exercise more control over dissidents in the USA. The only transfer of the Phoenix Program was the use of computers to identify dissidents, but that was perfectly logical to use updated technology to track dissidents. His observations did describe the growing militarization of US society to control dissent that have occurred over many recent decades, but again that was only logical and the roots go back to all fascist regimes. All of these methods were designed to control populations under their control to counter any threats to their capitalist system.

• Fighting the Invisible Enemy: Imperial Fascism, Not Covid-19 by Lauren Smith from Internationalist 360°. (This is a call to action.)

• Backing the Wrong Horseman by Craig Murray (Scotland) from his weblog. (Note: You will need to know about the "Four Horsemen".)

• The Gates Foundation and the War on Cash by Colin Todhunter from Off-Guardian.

• Welcome to the era of the Great Disillusionment by Jonathan Cook from his weblog. (Note: I hope that this is the "era of the Great Disillusionment", but I have doubts. We have been lied to for many decades since WWII. Media corporations lied before this, but their lying was not as systemized and consciously controlled as it is today.)

• Fed’s Powell Tells Reporters Fed Has Only “Lending Powers” – So How Does It Own $5.5 Trillion of Securities? by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s Anti-China Campaign Strategy is Part of a Broader Imperialist War Against China by Danny Haiphong from Black Agenda Report.

• The Victory America Won for Fascism and Nazism After WWII by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

My commentary: I've spent entirely too much time on this article, and I advise you to avoid it in the interests of efficiency of your time to understand current monumental issues that confront humans. Zuesse's tremendous efforts in this article is to establish, once and for all, his social-democratic understanding of these these current issues. His views are a product of a post-war education in which social-democractic views were still fashionable on college campuses and those espousing them were amply rewarded. To hold his social-democratic views is to ignore the innumerable historical events of capitalist exploitation of workers that preceded WWII. Some of these events I have written about in my "best posts" category.

I only draw attention to this article because this perspective still exists among American intellectuals, and its influence is pernicious to say the least. To restore capitalism as it was before WWII is impossible, but that is what many American bloggers like Paul Craig Roberts, old-fashion conservatives like Pat Buchanan, and historians like Eric Zuesse want to do. If, on the other hand, you see capitalism as a system that evolves or develops over time into complete capitalist class rule (fascism), you will see social-democracy as a dead end, and work for system change.

• Turkey courts Washington as disillusionment with Russia grows by Ragip Soylu from Middle East Eye.

“Recent developments in our region, particularly in Syria and Libya, have once again demonstrated the importance of upholding the Turkish-US alliance and cooperation at full strength,” Erdogan wrote.

One Turkish official, speaking anonymously, told Middle East Eye that Ankara’s calculation has been changing since its military clashed with the Syrian government in the country's Iblib province, where nearly 60 Turkish soldiers had been killed in February.

My question: Could the unpredictiable Erdogan simply be playing USA and Russia off against each other (def.) similar to the prime ministers of India?

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, April 29, 2020

• YouTube Censors Viral Video of Doctors Criticizing ‘Stay-at-Home’ Order by Paul Joseph Watson from Summit News. (Note: You also might be interested in a video by James Corbett.)

• Shi Zhengli Provides Proof SARS CoV-2 Was Not An Accidental Release From Wuhan Institute of Virology by Jim White from emptywheel.

• Lockdown Therapy for Capitalism by Hiroyuki Hamada from OffGuardian.

• Rockefeller Foundation Paper Published in 2010 Predicted How a Pandemic Can be Used as an Excuse to Establish Global Authoritarian Power by F. William Engdahl from Need to Know. (I am re-posting this article from Need to Know because it contains a link to the referenced article 2010 Rockefeller Foundation document. Engdahl's post was originally from this website.)

• The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020” by Peter Koenig from Global Research. (Note: This article is on the same Rockefeller document that the above post refers to.)

• The hidden hands behind UK Government response to COVID19. Who is pulling the strings? from UK Column (via YouTube). (Note: This 23:28m video features Vanessa Beeley. You might also be interested in an article in UK Column by Beeley on the same subject.)

• Millions of US workers blocked from applying for jobless benefits by Kevin Reed from World Socialist Web Site. (Note: If you found this interesting, you may also be interested in another article from this website entitled "Round two of the “Paycheck Protection Program”: Another disaster for US small businesses and their employees". )

My commentary: Finally I've come across articles from this website about their concern for employees of small businesses and the owners of small businesses, but I didn't see concern for others who are ineligible of unemployment benefits, and a part of the "gig economy" or self-employed.

• Wall Street stealing COVID-19 bailout from Main Street from the Rick Sanchez news on RT (via YouTube).

• ‘Red Dawn Breaking Bad’: Officials Warned About Safety Gear Shortfall Early On, Emails Show by Rachana Pradhan and Christina Jewett from Kaiser Health News.

• Death: A Simple Idea With A Powerful Punch by Edward Curtin from his weblog Behind the Curtain.

• Will China replace Islam as the West's new enemy? by Peter Oborne from Middle East Eye.

• China’s Detection and Reporting of the Covid-19 Outbreak by Roger Stoll from Dissident Voice. 

Posts that I especially recommend and commentaries for today:Monday, April 27, 2020

• The New York Fed Is Exercising Powers Never Bestowed on It by any Law by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. (Although these bloggers are advocating only reforms to the capitalist system, they contribute much to enhance our understand of the powerful Federal Reserve that capitalist agents try to keep hidden.)

• Narrative Managers Argue China-Like Internet Censorship Is Needed by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 

• The New “Normal”: We Do Have Some Say in All This by Brett Jordan from Global Research. 

• Bill Gates pretends that Event 201 never happened by Norbert Häring, a German economist, from his weblog Money and more. (Note: Be sure to click on the link "video on control of public opinion". Viewing this video, you will need to see beyond the polite delivery and nice smiles to reach the underlying attitude of managing public opinion that was necessary to pull off this project, maybe the current pandemic crisis, and future projects planned for us by the capitalist ruling class.)

• The New Meaning of Genocide by Stephen Karganovic from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• “Artificial Intelligence Plan" That Became "Coronavirus Plan” & “China Did It” Narrative Is WMDs 2.0  (My summary: This post features a report by Whitney Webb and discussion of the report between her and  Ryan Cristián, the founder and editor of the website The Last American Vagabond. Webb's insightful comments are in the segment that runs between 7:27m to 39:10m of the more than three hours of the podcast. The remainder of the post is mostly devoted to a rant, or maybe a tirade, by Cristián about the manipulations of corporate media to get us to hate China, those who are duped by these media corporations, Donald Trump, and the recent Cares Act which is giving billions to wealthy individuals and corporations.  

Cristián joins Jimmy Dore in being shocked and angry about all the political events which have been recently happening and have been reported for many years in left-wing alternative media. Cristián does not yet identify these perpetrators as the Deep State, instead he describes them as little more than "bad guys".) However, could he and Dore be "canaries in the coal mine" (def.) who are the forerunners of "surplus"  workers when they also wake up in the months to come? I think that the anger of these two may be an advanced warning of things to come (def.).

• The Era of Mass Strikes Begins on May 1, First Day of General Strike Campaign by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers from Dissident Voice. 

• Dissident British ex-diplomat Craig Murray indicted for blog posts in Kafkaesque case by Ben Norton from The Grayzone.

Posts that I especially recommend and a commentary for today:Sunday, April 26, 2020

• Dr. Erickson Covid-19 Briefing. Edward Curtin, a sociologist, posts on his weblog Behind the Curtain a discussion by two experienced medical doctors with extensive backgrounds in microbiology. (Note: They review the results of testing that is now becoming available from all parts of the world. The two medical specialists conclude, based on the data, is that we should start opening many venues that allow people to be exposed to this new virus in order to strengthen their immune systems. They also reveal pressure from government agencies to record the cause of many deaths due to coronavirus which tends to skew the data. This is a must-watch video.) (4/29/2020 update: Sorry, but this video was taken off of YouTube. Our masters decided that you might get the "wrong" ideas of the current methods of controlling COVID-19. You see, the immunologists argued, with considerable data, different views about sheltering in place, wearing masks, etc. as effective means of controlling the virus. See this for further details.)(4/30/2020 update: now I see that it has been downloaded and restored to the internet by Bitchute.)

• Pentagon Study: Flu Shot Raises Risk of Coronavirus by 36% by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. from Principia Scientific International (British).

• Coronavirus, fictitious capital and financial crisis by Sankha Subhra Biswas from CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt). (Note: This post regarding the economy of India is for those who have extensive knowledge of investments and finance.)

• ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Espionage is the Charge, But He’s Really Accused of Sedition by Joe Lauria from Consortium News.

• US elites use Russiagate playbook to blame China and promote hostility. Aaron Maté from The Grayzone interviews what his guest Ajit Singh, and attorney, knows about this current propaganda barrage against China.

• Hilarious Kim Jong Un Jokes, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Iraq facing a great US threat: China, al-Hashd and Iran out, or else … (1/2) by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog.

My commentary: While the covid-19 panademic is raging across the Earth, the Deep State that governs their Empire continues with their assault on little countries like Iraq. They use their money-power to play off Sunnis and Kurds against the Shiites who are the majority. Money, under capitalism, is the medium of all security, and the poor country of Iraq is very susceptible to its power. 

Of course, here in the center of the Empire, we Americans are not interested in their problems because we think that they are unrelated to our problems. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

You see, the capitalist rullng class does the same thing here in America as they do throughout the world. They play off one group against another by playing, one class against another through the use of their money-power. However, they have one additional power: they "own" media corporations which control our perceptions about reality, and they control every other institution by bribing the upper middle class with lucrative careers and perks. Thus, they control our minds using the power of money most of which they have managed to consolidate in their hands. 

Like in the game of Monoply in which the winner drives all others into bankruptcy, this is the logic of capitalism being played out in nature. Despite all the efforts of our "rescuers" like Lenin, Rosa Luxemborg, Che Guevara, etc., it looks to me like the capitalist ruling classes will win this "game". However, these masters in their arrogance have failed to notice that they, too, are in the web of life and must submit to the more powerful laws of nature. Because this tiny group of capitalist rulers have managed in their obsessive quest for power to destroy the habitat which supports all life that has existed on our unique planet Earth, the rest of humanity together with nearly all other species will perish with them. This is the ultimate tragedy.

Posts that I especially recommend and a commentary for today:Saturday, April 25, 2020

• The Deadliest Pandemic by Paul Edwards from CounterPunch.

• Part 1: How the Chinese Authorities and the World Health Organization Handled the Coronavirus by Vijay Prashad from Independent Media Institute. (My reaction: The report (with documentation) clashes with the endless narratives transmitted by corporate media and US officials that blame Chinese officials for the delay in alerting the rest of the world about the pandemic. So, who do you believe? I believe Prashad, not only because of his honest character, but because of the contents of this well-documented report.) 

• World Food Programme warns: COVID-19 pandemic will cause “famines of biblical proportions” by Jean Shaoul from Defend Democracy Press.

• Russia warns US about biological weapons concern by Joaquin Flores from FRN (Fort Russ News). (Note: This international treaty (1972) which banned biological weapons corresponds to Francis Boyle's attempts to ban the US government's production of biological weapons in 1990. But if you believe that the US government functions according to laws or agreements, I have a bridge to sell you (def.). But if you don't agree with the last statement, you are in good company (def.) with American Indians.) 

• As US passes 50,000 deaths, workers strike against back-to-work campaign by Shannon Jones and Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site. (Note: I'm posting this only in order to respond to it.)

My commentary: I've noticed that the this website's editors have consistently advocated for worker's safely in response to the threat of the current pandemic. And, I've also noticed their lack of concern about the government's refusal to offer any significant support for millions of non-essential workers. WSWS seems in agreement with the ruling class's obvious view that corresponds to a condescending quote (1789) attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake", which referred to the French ruling class's utter lack of concern for the millions of French who where facing famine.

It seems to me that the huge numbers of "non-essential" workers and the owner's of small businesses are facing simular threats to their survival: loss of homes (due to evictions and inability to maintain mortgage payments), can't afford medical care, instability of families (divorces and spouse problems) in addition to feeding their families. These workers may be non-essential to the capitalist ruling class, but their jobs are essential to them. Perhaps this attitude is related to the ruling class's solution to the climate crisis--depopulation. But I remain astounded by WSWS's stance on this issue.

One cannot blame these workers if they insist on returning to their jobs, but the small business owners do not have this option. However, many workers are employed by small business owners. Perhaps it is time to consider other options. (Also, be sure to see the next post.)

• Many Strikes Are Coming Before Nov. Election & After. w/Jane McAlevey from The Jimmy Dore Show (via YouTube). (Note: McAlevey, a labor organizer, continues talking about how to organize workers.)

• Capitalism Can’t Be Repaired – Coronavirus Shows Its Huge Weaknesses by Richard D. Wolff from Brave New Europe. 

• Would We Have Already Had a COVID-19 Vaccine Under Socialism? by Vanessa A. Bee  from In These Times.

Posts that I especially recommend and a commentary for today: Friday, April 24, 2020

My commentary after viewing the film entitled Planet of the Humans last night: (Editing for greater clarification was made at 8:56 PM CT.)

Basically, Jeff Gibbs concludes that humans are doomed, and he cites three explanations to account for this: 1) We humans cannot and have not faced the fact that we are like all other creatures and life forms--we are only temporary. Although in an unequal fashion we have excelled in controlling the environment to serve the needs of certain humans, this led to the second problem. 2) Our population has skyrocketed during the past few centuries that has caused the contamination of the Earth's ecosystem. 3) The profit system or capitalism has driven us to produce all kinds of stuff that is overwhelming the Earth's ecosystem. In the final moments of the film he circles back to the first theme. 

What ties these themes together is the attack of the Green Movement and their outlandish promises of solving the obviously developing degradation of the environment and, most especially, global warming.

The attack on the obvious failings of the Green Movement provides a variety of thinkers (Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Rockefeller Foundation, liberals like Michael Moore, anti-capitalists, and followers of Cory Morningstar and Wrong Kind of Green website) reasons to support the film. The Green Movement has promoted fake solutions that have helped to convince people that solar power, wind power, and the burning of biomass could save us. In the film these are revealed as nothing less than foolhardy solutions. Gibbs exaggerates this argument in order to thoroughly demolish the Green's proposals. He makes them look ridiculous. This is not entirely the case, but the outlandish promises made by the Green Movement led to this attack. The problem was the ruling capitalist class.
 
Although Gibbs does not make this explicitly clear, the Green Movement was corrupted by capitalists who infiltrated this movement in order to integrate it with their primary interests of profit and power. He is right in his belief that other humans needed to sustain their false belief in their immortality and rather easily succumbed to the enticements offered by the capitalist ruling classes. But who continued supporting religions in spite of man-made science that was uncovering the secrets of nature? Capitalist ruling classes. Like all ruling classes they soon learned the benefits of co-opting and modified them so that the Greens didn't interfere in their quest for power--the domination of others who would serve their needs of material comforts.

The capitalist class has always put their faith in the accumulation of wealth after discovering that wealth gave them power to dominate others. This faith was strengthened after discovering that they could use science to accumulate even greater wealth. However, capitalists also were disturbed by this existential problem of their mortality, so they turned to the solution offered by the feudal ruling class that they replaced--inheritance laws in which the accumulation of wealth and power in their families could be reproduced indefinitely in their descendants. This gave them a sense of immortality which most humans crave. Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of Britain, expressed this succinctly when she said that there was no such thing as society, only families.

As a critique of the Green Movement it succeeds, but it fails as an ultimate explanation for the growing recognition of our demise as humans. It satisfies capitalists in that it legitimatizes efforts to reduce global populations (but not theirs); it satisfies anti-capitalists as a critique of capitalism, and lastly the film satisfies those (mostly religious figures) who see human weakness (self-fulfilling argument) as the real cause of the extinction of humans. But could this failure be necessary in order to obtain the funding and support necessary to finance the film from such a variety of sources?

• Capitalism on Life Support… Time for a Cure by an editor of Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Podcast: Whitney Webb on the Rise of a Biotech Industrial Complex Under COVID-19 which features Mnar Muhawesh, the founder of Mint Press News, interviewing the very informative Whitney Webb on what she knows and other evidence about the background of people associated with the present coronavirus in the apparent quest to increase ruling class control in the USA and the world. (Note: This is nearly an hour, but the information is voluminous, and we get to hear Webb who, I think, will impress you with her breadth of knowledge and good judgment. And/or you may be interested in Webb's appearance on The Jimmy Dore Show where she explains some of the main findings in "a recent document acquired through a FOIA request" in her article from The Last American Vagabond entitled "Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using Coronavirus To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision").

• Coronavirus Lockdown and What You Are Not Being Told by Iain Davis from BS News (Britain).   

• China’s Covid-19 Reporting Is Truthful, Birx and Trump Demonstrate-Unwittingly by John V. Walsh from Dissident Voice.

• Healthworkers Call for Action on Workers Memorial Day from Reel News (via YouTube). (Note: We hear from health workers their observations about this pandemic.)

• The Russians And The Chinese Are Your Enemy (poetry) by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• How To Start A Successful Strike During Crisis. w/Jane McAlevey from The Jimmy Dore Show (via YouTube). (Note: McAlevey offers very impressive tips on organizing workers.)

• Capitalism and the Illusion of Democracy by Rob Urie from CounterPunch. (Note: Although the author makes some good points about "democratic" elections, he employs the term "state capitalism" to describe the present system in the USA and the Empire. What does this term mean? He doesn't define it. Might it mean by inference that the oligarchy controls the government? And further, could he by implication be arguing for small capitalism that existed 150 years ago? If so, this is a silly argument. Capitalism always develops by consolidating wealth and power in ever greater concentrations.)

•  Earth Day, Live Hope Presentation 2020 featuring Guy McPherson (via YouTube) building his argument that we are on the edge of abrupt climate change and global dimming, he reviews many scientific studies. Along the way he also explains the concept of "global dimming" in which reduced industrial activity results in even more global warming. McPherson elucidates this topic in the context of an opportunity to fully appreciate life in the current moment.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, April 23, 2020 (Added the first post at 12:43 PM CT)

• We cannot expect capitalists to manage a pandemic by Susan Rosenthal from her weblog. 

• Diseased System in Shut-Lockdown: Never a Better Time to Fight for Socialism by Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report. 

My commentary: I scanned this article and discovered that I differ from Ford as to the history of socialism in the Soviet Union. After reading widely in their history, I conclude that socialism only lasted a few years. Soon after Lenin died and Stalin consolidated control of the government, the Soviet Union deteriorated into what I call "bureaucratism" (others call it "state capitalism").

The original Bolsheviks were exhausted fighting the Allies among the capitalist countries and the White armies, the embargos, etc. After Lenin died and the Stalinists consolidated control, the Soviet bureaucracy (also called "nomenklatura") gradually served themselves extra privileges denied to ordinary Russians: they appointed themselves to advanced positions in the bureaucracy, they got their children into the best schools and later into the best careers, they shopped at exclusive stores, etc.)

• Revisting Lenin’s “What is to be Done?” After Bernie Sanders by Tatiana Cozzarelli from Left Voice.

• Why Post-Coronavirus America Will Have Massive Poverty by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• Landlords Illegally Evicting Tenants, Despite Federal Restrictions by Rebecca Burns from The American Prospect.

• WATCH: Planet of the Humans [Full Film] from Wrong Kind of Green. Blogger's Note: Because I have not viewed this film yet, I cannot recommend it personally. Although I have reservations from the people who have endorsed it, I am posting this because Wrong Kind of Green has promoted it:

This compelling, must-see movie – a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows – is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way—before it’s too late.

• In Light of the Global Pandemic, Focus Attention on the People posted in English on Defend Democracy Press. (Note: I believe this effort, along with all other efforts, is too late. I also believe that the first order of business is to overthrow capitalism (not "changes" or reforms) and install a sustainable system to redeem humans who have been responsible for the destruction of the environment that sustains life.)

• Merchants of death: Multibillion-dollar bailout for arms industry amid rising COVID-19 toll by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

• The AngloZionists Are Launching a Strategic PSYOP Against China by "The Saker" (Andrei Rsevsky) from The Unz Review. (Note: You may be interested in the frustrated and angry reactions that a descendant (read B. Faulkner's intro of Raevsky) of White Russian refugees has toward US government officials during this pandemic.)

• Human Lab Rats: The U.S. Government’s Secret History of Grisly Experiments by John W. Whitehead from Dissident Voice.

• ‘Republic of hunger’ in the Time of ‘Lockdown’ by Shashi Kant Tripathi from United World (based in Turkey). 

• US rewards for Hezbollah leaders’ heads: How do they affect the organisation? by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog.

My commentary: This distinguished Middle Eastern journalist writes how the rich US/Anglo/Zionist Empire operates in regions of the Middle East that are not under their control. The ruling capitalist classes control nearly all media in the countries they control, and thus control the narratives (control the perceptions of reality among populations) published/broadcast by media outlets throughout their Empire. 

However, the directors of the Empire (major capitalists) must resort to crude bounties on leaders who are their antagonists and independent of Empire influences in the Middle East. Magnier reports that these bounties inevitably backfire. Instead, such leader-antagonists receive rewards in terms of status and perks that other, more cooperative (with the Empire) leaders do not.

This reaction is in stark contrast with media corporations within the Empire. After many years of infiltrating these corporations, the directors of the Empire now have complete control of media (formerly they had only partial control), and thus control all information that their populations receive. The directors of the Empire do this by rewarding easily corrupted journalists with lucrative careers. The latter careerists joined many other "professionals" (particularly in education) in the upper-middle class (Malcolm X referred to them as house niggers: he used this term when speaking to largely African-American audiences, but YouTube purged these videos) who enjoy the many fruits of capitalist rule.

This is the primary secret of the Empire's success; and need I add, the demise of humans and most other species on the unique planet Earth.