Fracking – another commodity bubble of our times

Click here to access article by Bryan MacDonald from RT. 

Just like the housing bubble of the early years of this century, the fashion for fracking is also heading towards a cliff. Once the attractive spots have been milked, production will slump and many wells will not even take off at all, following the example of Poland where drilling dozens of wells has led to nothing.

It’s obvious that a few years from now, fracking will be seen as this period’s equivalent of the tulip and dot-com convulsions. The environmental legacy will be felt in the US for a considerable period, but markets will, doubtlessly, swiftly move on to the next fad.

These are the conclusions that an independent Irish journalist reaches regarding the much ballyhooed shale oil fracking that has produced so much oil and gas recently in the US. His article explains the reasons for this conclusion.

His observations correspond very well with energy analysts like Gail Tverberg whose articles I have frequently posted here for the past five years. Tverberg's views are widely respected among independent scientists and technologists. However, in contrast to her views the implications that MacDonald draws from this forecast are frivolous. 

Energy is no fad. Cheap energy has made the pyramid scheme of capitalism possible in the past 300 years. With the decline of cheap fossil fuel energy, our world will change drastically. We can expect more wars--hopefully not major conflagrations--as capitalist gangs fight over the remaining sources. In addition, we can expect what we are already beginning to experience: major economic disruptions and the associated austerity policies of poverty, unemployment, police state methods deal with riots, etc. Then, of course, there is that other devil that is waiting to take humanity down--catastrophic climate destabilization caused by the excessive burning of fossil fuels to fuel capitalism's cancer-like growth. 

The question for the world's Ninety-Nine Percent is: are we going to be merely passive spectators of these developments, or are we going to take action to head off the disasters that await us under capitalism? Shakespeare's soliloquy has never been more important.

To be, or not to be, that is the question—
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

No Safe Place: How Cities Are Making It Illegal to be Homeless

Click here to access article by Michael Maskin from Talk Poverty. 

How are we to understand this issue, and many others like the recent shooting of the unarmed African-American in a Saint Louis suburb (also see this) which are having such destructive effects on our lives, that is, the lives of the Ninety-Nine Percent in the US and throughout the world? I would like to offer what I consider to be an excellent thesis to help us understand what the Empire's One Percent are doing to us and why.

I recommend insights provided by British writers Camille Barbagallo and Nicholas Beuret in one chapter entitled "Revenge of the Remainder" (available online here) in a collection of essays in a book entitled Occupy Everything: Reflections on Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere. 

Their argument essentially is that the current economy under capitalism has reached the limits of exploitable growth and simultaneously has eliminated most subsistence activities outside of the formal economy. The capitalist economy no longer needs as many people to obtain their profits under a no-growth scenario. It has created surplus people who are a problem that capitalist authorities are having to deal with. Referring to the inevitable result, they write:

Over the last 40 years the world has seen the birth of a new kind of worker--a worker bereft of work. Workers who inhabit precarity and are deemed to be superfluous to the requirement of capital.

So, this begs the question: how are the political operatives of the One Percent dealing with this problem? Barbagallo and Beuret have a very interesting answer. They borrow a concept from African philosopher Achille Mmembe called "necropolitics" where death assumes an important function of elite governance. Here is an excerpt from their illuminating essay which expands on this concept and provides an answer to this question.

With a surplus population, managing death is the core concern of political activity. One of the key political tasks is allowing them to die without endangering the section of the social body that must remain productive. Surplus humanity--the bodies dwelling in slums, ghettos, refugee camps, prisons, old people's home, ..., and of course those existing in the informal economy that are beyond any utility for capital--it is these bodies that are abandoned at as little cost as possible. This is necropolitics: the politics of containment and abandonment in a world without resources beyond the market.

This practice of allowing people to "fall behind" operates through a range of practices and discourses centred on a kind of Darwinian racism: a purity of ideas perfectly matched to the rhetoric of neoliberalism and "right to be unequal" held so dear. Necropolitics operates through diffused institutions--private companies, aid and disaster relief bodies, personal militias and government agencies. It creates a series of fragmented territories that disable mobility--territories in both the physical (slums, estates and prisons) and social sense (as in the idea of hoodies or welfare cheats).

Walled off and policed, these territories are maintained separately from those spaces deemed productive. Through a permanent state of siege the borders are maintained by either postcolonial policing (racial profiling, stop and search powers, ASBOs, anti-gang activities etc.), economic exclusion (such as redlining, or lack of educational facilities) or ideological public campaigns of shame and stigmatisation (against the unemployed, the migrant, the diseased or disabled). For all the differences that exist between exclusion through ASBOs vs containment via migration regimes or precarious service industry work vs informal micro-credit debt, the underlying logic is the same: contain, fragment, isolate and abandon. Kept apart as less than fully human, as not able to contribute, as a threat and contagion, these bodies are then allowed to die. Slowly. Inch by inch. Through hunger, ill health, disaster, gang violence, poverty and disease. This is the fate outlined by capital for one third of humanity today.

They end their essay with what appears to be an inevitable conclusion:

Only revenge is possible. By revenge we mean the inflicting of wounds so grave that our enemy suffers more than we do. A hatred of capital is necessary, but a rage to injure and inflict revenge from below is also required. Yet alongside this necessary violence, a process of salvage is needed. At this juncture, the question must no longer be one of better terms within a system that will only confine us to an ever-worsening condition, but one of escape. An armed escape. We must return to the fundamental question of life beyond the wage. We must seize the means of reproduction, violently, and with a hatred of a life enslaved. 

The militarization of police agencies from Ferguson to the Middle East

Click here to access article by Roqayah Chamseddine, a Lebanese-American journalist and commentator, posted on Al Akhbar. 

The author provides quite a comprehensive study of the militarization of police agencies by providing a history of their development and their transnational operations. You may be surprised to learn in this article that police/military agencies throughout the Empire are learning and training together in order to control any opposition coming from the Ninety-Nine Percent which are often seen, and dealt with, as an enemy. Within the US, these militarized police agencies disproportionately target African-Americans and other minorities.

US police forces uphold white supremacy with their racist implementation of violence, where in places like Ogden, Utah, Black people “were 40 times more likely to be impacted by a SWAT raid than whites were,” according to the ACLU. These forces work towards the preservation of capitalism, and the police, as an institution, use elitism, violence and authoritarianism in order to preserve the state.

You may also be interested in Glenn Greenwald's views on this development within the US.

Empire Blowback: The Islamic state now eating the former Iraq

Click here to access article by Jack Balkwill and Kevin Zeese from Popular Resistance.

The American people are now being subjected to a pro-war propaganda campaign that is quickly drawing the nation back into a war in Iraq. President Obama has become the fourth successive president to bomb Iraq. It is evident that control of Iraq has been a top priority of US foreign policy and now ISIS is the excuse for a new stage of attack. This article seeks to put the propaganda in perspective.

The authors provide an antidote to the latest Empire propaganda regarding the chaos in Iraq and nearby areas by drawing on many facts largely reported in alternative media. Because the Empire has so saturated the minds of Americans with propaganda using their ubiquitous media, people in alternative media must spend an overwhelming amount of time and energy doing the work of salvaging truth from so many lies and distortions; so much so in fact that I think they have less time and energy for simply reporting the straight truth about contemporary news and issues. Unfortunately, this work is necessary, and will remain so, until most Americans become thoroughly mistrustful of the One Percent's media and government. 

Americans, along with many other people in the world, will increasingly be forced to decide their own answer to the historical question: which side are you on?--the global One Percents or the global Ninety-Nine Percent.

Extreme weather becoming more common, study says

Click here to access article by Damian Carrington from The Guardian.

Extreme weather like the drought currently scorching the western US and the devastating floods in Pakistan in 2010 is becoming much more common, according to new scientific research.

The Latest in the New Cold War: My Money’s on Putin

Click here to access article by Mike Whitney from CounterPunch.  

Whitney draws from several astute analyses by informed sources to build a case for the defeat of the US dollar. He seems to welcome this development along with many others like William Engdahl and Pepe Escobar which they regard as only a positive development, a "multipolar world", and don't see the risks that such a challenge to the US dollar and US hegemony entails for the world.

The attack on the petrodollar recycling system is one of many asymmetrical strategies Moscow is presently employing to discourage US aggression, to defend its sovereignty, and to promote a multi-polar world order where the rule of law prevails. The Kremlin is also pushing for institutional changes that will help to level the playing field instead of creating an unfair advantage for the richer countries like the US.

While Whitney seems to trivialize this prospect by framing it as a wager, I am convinced that this challenge to the US dollar is fraught with peril. The dominance of the US dollar is one of the main foundations of Empire dominance in today's world, and Empire directors will not take this challenge lightly. Indeed, I think that there are many Empire actions in recent years that clearly indicate that they will meet this challenge very aggressively. Some of the most important are: the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya and arming the opposition, the sponsorship of terrorist groups in Syria, the recent and successful sponsorship of dissident groups to violently take over the Ukrainian government, the suspicious sudden appearance of terrorist groups armed with US weapons taking over a large part of Iraq, and the economic sanctions imposed on Russia. And maybe worst of all, there has been a dramatic increase of grossly inaccurate vitriol toward Russia reflected in US mainstream media coverage which seems to be designed to prepare the American public for more aggressive actions against Russia.

As I've argued before, we have already witnessed what a multi-polar capitalist world led to in the first half of the 20th century. I don't think we want a repeat of that especially with the combatants armed with nuclear weapons! Also, global capitalist elites are beginning to realize the finite nature of the world's resources, and will likely wage a fierce struggle to gain control of what's left to exploit.The only positive solution I see is a global upheaval of the world's Ninety-Nine Percent to overturn capitalism.

The Class War Goes Retail

Click here to access article by Emily Schwartz Greco and William A. Collins from Other Words.

This website advertizes itself as "progressive" and is a part of the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, and this article also contains content that is typical of liberal media. However, sometimes liberals stray a bit far into recognizing features of capitalism that usually go unrecognized by them and completely by mainstream media. This article illustrates this observation.

Their sub-headline, "Why does Wall Street tank on news portending economic gains for most Americans?" reveals the naivete, or deception, of liberals when confronted by obvious contradictions between the way capitalism actually functions and its self-serving propaganda. If you follow stock evaluations as I sometimes do, you will readily become aware that very frequently when corporations cut jobs, their stocks climb. Likewise, when news of wage increases, as reported in this article, increase for employees of corporations, their stock valuations decline. After all, under a capitalist system, labor costs are subtracted from profits, and profits go to the owning, and ruling, class. This is old news, but somehow these authors think it is an anomaly. Or, at least they want you to think that, as well as think that the system is only experiencing minor and temporary defects. They conclude their article with this incredible statement:

Until more U.S. political and business leaders decide they’ve had enough, this nation will become less of a democracy governed by the people and more of a plutocracy ruled by the rich.

Plutocracy based industrialism, and now finance, has been firmly in place in this nation from at least 1900 after inflicting many defeats on labor organizing and the Populist movement that challenged their rule in the latter 1800s.  

USA has always been a class structured society with a wealthy ruling class from its founding in 1776 by rich merchants and slave-owning large landowners like George Washington. To accelerate their wealth and power, the original ruling class, reverently referred to as "founding fathers" by mainstream institutions, had to enlist the support of small farmers and working people to fight in their war of independence from Britain whose governing class (a blend of monarchy, aristocracy, and a rising merchant and industrial class) wanted to keep the colonies as only a source of raw materials to the mother country. The US ruling class enlisted this support by proclaiming radical ideas about democracy. This is precisely why the moving Declaration of Independence differs so dramatically from the Constitution in its original form. Only later was the Bill of Rights, which the ruling class mostly ignored, tacked on to insure passage. (Please see my commentary in this 2011 post for further details.) The American ruling class has tried to maintain these democratic myths ever since; and as you can see, have been largely successful.

Intervention and Displacement

Click here to access article by Leisy Abrego posted at Stanford University Press Blog.

Any time Central American leaders sought to reduce poverty, redistribute unused lands, or tax foreign companies, the CIA removed those officials. 

Why Obama is bombing the Caliph

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar, a Brazilian journalist, posted in RT.

Escobar translates Empire's "Newspeak" into language that makes much more sense, and sheds light on what is really happening currently in Iraq. 

Obama’s bombing of the Caliph’s goons has absolutely nothing to do with US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power’s much beloved R2P (‘responsibility to protect’) doctrine – as in the responsibility to protect up to 150,000 Yazidis, not to mention Kurds and remaining Christians, from a ‘potential’ genocide carried out by the Caliph’s goons.

The whole fighter jets + drones bombing exercise, lasting ‘months’, has to do with the Benghazi syndrome. 

Keystone XL's Climate Impact Worse Than Thought: Study

Click here to access article by Andrea Germanos from Common Dreams.

The author bases his article on a recent study posted behind a paywall in a journal published by the reputable Nature Publishing Group. Germanos focuses on the many underestimates of emissions previously cited by government agencies. However, I think he overlooks an important fact when he highlights a quote from an environmentalist:

"It's obvious that Keystone XL isn't going to single-handedly cause or solve climate change," Luísa Abbott Galvão, climate and energy associate at Friends of the Earth, told Common Dreams, but it speaks to what we've "called the 'Keystone principle,' which is the idea that we can't be investing in infrastructure that's going to lock in our fossil fuel reliance."

That missing fact is that a capitalist economy with its growth requirement must rely on the relatively cheap source of energy provided by fossil fuels. There is no promising, alternative, cheap source of energy in sight, and capitalists see that. What they don't see, or refuse to acknowledge, is that cheaply available fossil fuels are diminishing rapidly. This fact, of course, dooms their system which lays so many of their golden eggs of power and wealth. 

However, that fact which they refuse to acknowledge will doom all of us. We will be affected in the near term by more horrors of wars (as we already are) for control of diminishing supplies, and in the long-term by catastrophic climate destabilization. If we of the global Ninety-Nine Percent fail to dismantle the capitalist system and replace it with a sustainable system, we are indeed "fucked".

Blown Chances in Gaza

Click here to access article by Sandy Tolan from TomDispatch. (If you wish to skip Engelhardt's introduction, you will need to scroll down to the article.)

While Engelhardt's introduction lays appropriate stress on the US's role in creating chaos throughout the Middle East and Afghanistan, he arrives at the odd conclusion that Israel and the US have blown their chances at creating stability--as if this was ever their interest!

The vast Empire support given to the creation of Israel on Palestinian land and their continuing support ever since is obvious evidence that peace and stability never ranked high on the Empire agenda. While I think that Tolan's article accurately summarizes many of the facts leading up to the present crisis, I think that the Zionist agenda is much more than what he suggests: 

...the destruction of Gazan neighborhoods and significant aspects of the area’s infrastructure should be seen as part of Israel’s larger objective: dividing Palestinians from one another and so deep-sixing the possibility of genuine self-determination.  As early as 1973, Ariel Sharon, one of the founders of the Likud party and a champion of the settler movement, described his aim as putting so many settlements on the West Bank that they would become impossible to remove.

I think that this, the complete cancellation of any independent Palestinian state, is only one step in a much large plan. There is strong evidence that the Zionist agenda has always been imperialist: to expand their control “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” This objective conflates well with the Empire's desire to control the Middle East and its fossil fuel resources.

NYT Discovers Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis at War

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews.

Neo-Nazis wave their flag after capturing Ukrainian town.

Parry highlights the latest dramatic example of news management by media directors of the Empire regarding the neo-Nazis that the Empire is backing in Ukraine.  

In their aims for global control, Empire directors often must recruit and use the lowest-of-the-low to facilitate their imperialist agenda, but while doing so their media must always keep such facts hidden or minimized to avoid disturbing their subjects. There has been widespread indications of neo-Nazi involvement in Ukraine, and ruling class media directors have had to exert great control to shape the developments in Ukraine to encourage maximum public support for their agenda. To do this, they often tap into the old cold-war game of blaming Russia.

The New York Times reported almost in passing on Sunday that the Ukrainian government’s offensive against ethnic Russian rebels in the east has unleashed far-right paramilitary militias that have even raised a neo-Nazi banner over the conquered town of Marinka, just west of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

Fossil Fuels Raising Mercury Levels in Oceans: Study

Click here to access article by Chris Rose from DeSmogBlog.

Published last week in the prestigious international journal Nature, the study, A global ocean inventory of anthropogenic mercury based on water column measurements, revealed that levels of the environmental poison in marine waters less than 100 metres deep have more than tripled since the Industrial Revolution.

The Real Reason The US Is Bombing Iraq

Click here to access article by Brandon Turbeville from Activist Post. 

Turbeville reveals the underlying reality of the current US bombing of Iraq which exposes the deception of Obama's rhetoric regarding humanitarian concerns as just another public relations cover for war crimes. But, of course, that was why he was hired. He is very talented in delivering lies to the public. And as a extra bonus, his African-American appearance (although raised by a white banker grandmother and thoroughly indoctrinated in elite schools) provides an added layer of protection from critical liberals.

The fact is that al-Qaeda, IS, and the other related terrorist organizations function as the CIA’s Arab legion. They are used to weaken and overthrow governments as well as to act as a constant bogeyman for populations back home so that civil liberties and Constitutional rights will be sacrificed willingly for the perception of security.

When these proxy armies begin to endanger oil production or any other project of the world oligarchy, however, they are eliminated and the threat that they pose is neutralized.

Malaysian press charges Ukraine government shot down MH 17

Click here to access article by Alex Lantier from World Socialist Web Site.

Referring to the Malaysian press charges and other evidence that has been ignored, Lantier writes:

These developments also constitute yet another indictment of the Western media, which have completely blacked out the investigation of the crash of MH17 and the latest material in the New Straits Times. Instead, the elements in the CIA and their Ukrainian proxies driving the war in eastern Ukraine have been able to escalate the confrontation with Russia and demonize Putin, without any of their unsubstantiated accusations of Russian involvement in the MH17 crash being challenged. 

Well, of course, if one realizes that Western media are owned and controlled by the One Percent ruling class, how could one expect any different treatment of this tragedy? This is only one more indication that one must turn to independent journalists, observers, and other reliable sources for information. Kick the mainstream media habit!

US stokes South China Sea tensions at ASEAN summit

Click here to access article by Peter Symonds from World Socialist Web Site.

The Obama administration has used the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum in Burma last weekend to again intensify pressure on Beijing over territorial disputes with neighbouring countries in the South China Sea.

While it's easy to be distracted by all the Empire's war crimes in the Middle East and Ukraine, one should not overlook the fact that our ruling Empire directorate are preparing to confront any and all nations who stand in the way of the Empire's ruling capitalist classes in their quest for control of every valuable resource on earth, cheap labor, and control of markets. 

Let us pray that they don't become so intoxicated with their addiction to power that they provoke a nuclear war. I think mankind would rather die a slow death brought on by their excessive use of fossil fuels which will inevitably result in climate destabilization.

Norman Finkelstein: There was NO WAR in GAZA, it was a MASSACRE

Thanks to Veterans News Now for posting this 12:28m YouTube video commentary on 8-3-2014.

Watch CIA director John Brennan lie about spying on congress

Click here to access article from Privacy SOS.

What I find difficult to understand is the superficial treatment that such revelations as this receive by various actors in the media, especially what passes as alternative media in the US, those involved which are members of Congress, and a prominent civil liberties advocacy organization, the ACLU. All of the above, and possibly this writer, express surprise about a CIA director lying to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee about CIA's email surveillance on members of Congress. Then we see Obama, who plays the role of Chief Executive Officer of the US to cover his real function as the ruling class's chief of public relations (CPR), expressing support for the CIA director, and wanting as usual with such disclosures of high crimes by secret agencies the need to move on: 

The president’s comments about Mr. Brennan suggested that the administration was ready to put the spying matter behind it.

The best that could happen with this issue, which poses a fundamental Constitutional conflict between the Executive and Congress, would be that Brennan resigns and replaced by someone else who, of course, would approve of the same actions. Thus, nothing would change except people, but at least this might be a way to salvage the reputation of Congress and the mythology of representative government. The shadow government has become so overwhelmingly powerful that I doubt that they have much concern about this incident as demonstrated by their CFR. What is more likely is that nothing will be done other than a few Congressional people crying foul.

I frequently wonder how many lies it takes for most Americans to understand the fake system of government that they allow to rule over them. Because I have been tracking official government lies since 1959 beginning with their problems with the revolutionary government of Cuba and continuing with countless number of lies since, and have studied reliable histories which have filled in the many lies and deceptions that occurred before my time, I have arrived at a very different political consciousness than have my fellow Americans. 

I have easily arrived at the position that I have expressed so many times in this blog: the official organs of government are a facade behind which lie the real decision makers who are top members of the One Percent, a true ruling class whose power is based on the ownership and control of the economy, and much of the world's economy. They are now in control of an Empire which threatens to wage war, and wages war directly or indirectly against any nation or people who get in their way of global domination. They ally themselves with the most despicable governments in pursuit of their interests. They also, with their dependence on fossil fuels, and their obsession with maintaining the system of capitalism--the "goose that lays their golden eggs"--are on their way to destabilizing the climate which threatens human existence.

Unions That Used to Strike

Click here to access article by Robert Brenner and Suzi Weissman from Jacobin. 

The ILWU, once known for its militancy and political radicalism, faces a choice between nurturing rank-and-file power and a slow, painful death.

As usual there has been a mainstream media blackout on the issues affecting a number of workers in the port cities of southern Washington and northern Oregon. I only learned of it by driving through Longview, Washington a few years ago and seeing a number of signs supporting workers that were in front of working class homes. At that time I did some followup of the story in local media of the immediate area and realized how serious these issues were for thousands of working people. And now I read this.

...the International has at no time sought to mobilize the grain handler rank-and-file — the only way to amass power to win gains — but has done what it could to squelch all independent initiatives from below.

It is another illustration of the diminishing power of unions to protect their workers. The writers conclude their article with this observation:

It is a mystery how the leadership believes it can continue on its present course of passively standing by as scabs do its members’ work and still prevent the PNGHA [Pacific Northwest Grain Handlers Association: four giant corporations] from permanently imposing the devastating concessions extracted by EGT [Export Grain Terminal, a giant multinational grain combine] in Longview throughout the Northwest grain export business.

Nor is it even clear at this point how the union can stop the PNGHA from...the total destruction of the ILWU’s jurisdiction in Pacific Northwest grain handling.

Millennials are over Israel: A new generation, outraged over Gaza, rejects Washington’s reflexive support

Click here to access article by David Palumbo-Liu from Salon. 

Yes, the times they are a changin', as expressed so well in the Bob Dylan song, and supported by recent polls. It appears that the neoconservative agenda as promoted by the current US ruling class will be harder to implement in the years ahead. It seems that the old propaganda infused narrative about Jewish victimization to justify Israeli war crimes and apartheid-state policies is waning among the younger generation.

I imagine that the directors of the shadow government will respond by churning out much more Zionist propaganda in media and movies.

The West on the wrong path

Click here to access article by Gabor Steingart from Handelsblatt (a leading German financial newspaper).

As neighbors of Russia, as part of the European community bound in destiny, as recipient of energy and supplier of this and that, we Germans have a clearly more vital interest in stability and communication. We cannot afford to look at Russia through the eyes of the American Tea Party. 

While European officials are quick to support the US Empire's aggressive policies in support of their puppet government in Ukraine and in opposition to Russia, there may be cracks appearing in the German ruling capitalist class if this article is any indication. Germany, and Europe in general, have much to lose if US aggressive policies toward Russia continue. The separation of Russia from Europe is one of the prime considerations of Empire policies. Thus, Empire directors must be worried by opinions like this. (See also this, this, and this.)

Corporate 1% in U.S. Gets Wealthier While Cash Piles Up

Click here to access article by Lorraine Woellert from Bloomberg. 

The global nature of corporate activity transcends national boundaries under the latest version of capitalism called neoliberalism. Unlike their policies which control the movement of workers across national boundaries, our ruling class has made it easy for the rich and their corporations to move operations across boundaries. Just as US corporations have reduced their labor costs by transferring their operations to low cost labor areas of the world, so have they kept their money in low tax areas of the world. This results in austerity policies within the US and the further hollowing out of the infrastructure. Of course, US government expenses that are never cut are military and largely secret subversive and surveillance agencies like the CIA and NSA to insure the global dominance of the US-led capitalist gang.

Because tax law discourages moving that money back to the U.S., cash is piling up abroad and companies are taking novel steps to adapt, including borrowing against those assets to finance operations at home.

.... American multinationals are taxed by the country where profits are earned and by the U.S. when -- or if -- the money is brought back.

Hence, US corporations tend to keep their money out of the country.

What Obama Told The Caliph

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama. (satire?)

Berhard has an uncanny ability to see through public relations statements coming from the Empire and discerning what they really mean--especially from the Empire's leading public relations officer. In this piece he speculates on what the Obama's message Thursday really meant to the Caliph.

Climate Change – Point of No Return

Click here to access article by Margaret Kimberley from Black Agenda Report. 

Time’s up, or so planet earth seems to be telling humanity. Extreme weather conditions around the globe, including rising temperatures, droughts, crop failures, melting sea ice, rising sea levels, disappearing glaciers and the loss of plant and animal species all point in only one direction. The tipping point towards the sixth great extinction is taking place right now. 

Israel-Palestine: By the Numbers

Click here to access article by independent journalist Garry Leech from his blog. 

...this article seeks to use numbers to present the historical reality in an easily accessible manner and to highlight the distortions and inaccuracies that are prevalent in the rhetoric that emanates from Washington and Ottawa as well as the propaganda promulgated by the mainstream media in these nations. 

Naomi Klein: 'Our Economic Model Is at War with Life on Earth'

Click here to access article by Jon Queally from Common Dreams.

The author introduces us to a very important new book by the well-known Canadian activist entitled 'This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate'. In it Klein develops a thesis that she recently expressed so well to a union audience:

The case I want to make to you is that climate change—when its full economic and moral implications are understood—is the most powerful weapon progressives have ever had in the fight for equality and social justice. 

But first, we have to stop running away from the climate crisis, stop leaving it to the environmentalist, and look at it. Let ourselves absorb the fact that the industrial revolution that led to our society’s prosperity is now destabilizing the natural systems on which all of life depends.

Climate change...[is] not an 'issue' for you to add to the list of things to worry about it. It is a civilizational wake up call.

In a video trailer introducing the new book, Klein quotes a scientist delivering a talk to a meeting of the Geophysics Union entitled "Is the Earth Fucked?":

Palestine: the only solution is now the one-state solution

Click here to access article by John Rees from CounterFire (Britain).

A one-state solution has always been the only legitimate solution for the huge mistake that Anglo-American ruling classes and their Zionist collaborators made by setting up the state of Israel. However, such a solution is not possible as long as the Empire, or any capitalist empire, exists. This pariah state is a creation of capitalist imperialism in order to control access to the abundant fossil fuels in the Middle East, and only the dissolution of capitalism and the establishment of egalitarian societies can finally lead to a one-state solution. 

This liberal author and CounterFire have a myopic view of the current crises as argued in another article entitled "From Gaza to Ukraine: unite opposition to Britain's warmongering elite", and because of this they can only advocate the same old strategies of working within the capitalist system to make the problems go away. And, one of their favorite strategies is an old one--protests and more protests. 

It seems that liberals are exhibiting a kind of mental illness by constantly doing the same thing and imagining a different result. Capitalist ruling classes have clearly demonstrated the ability to control protests so that they don't interfere with their various destructive projects.

The Old Continent’s Road to Ruin (Through Moscow)

Click here to access article by Don Quijones from Wolf Street. 

The message was clear from the U.S. and European leadership: sanctions against Russia would have a “limited spill over” on U.S. and European businesses and a “moderate effect” on their economies. At least that was the plan – or at least the plan presented for public consumption. Unfortunately, the spoilsport that is Vladimir Putin seems rather less inclined to play along.

.... As the stakes get higher in a trade war that has already inflicted serious pain on many European and Russian companies as well as on their broader economies, the big question is: Who Will Fold First?

Russia, as always throughout modern history, refuses to submit to the dictates of other would-be imperial powers. Thus, they must be punished. The problem for the directors of the Empire is to keep Europe under their control while directing mostly a proxy war against Russia. The author sees a lot of difficulties that may get in the way of their plans.

So, once again, if we fail to act, we ordinary people must brace ourselves for more capitalist intrigues and power struggles. There seems to be no end to the crises that they are imposing on the world's Ninety-Nine Percent. The question I ask is: why brace ourselves instead of working to dismantle the system which gives them their power? Why put up with their intrigues, their crises, and their disasters any longer given the fact that future disasters will be far worse than ever before?

The Role of US Corporate Entertainment in the Social Control Element of Imperialism

Click here to access article by Danny Haiphong posted on Black Agenda Report.

It is rather rare to find anyone pointing out the influence of the capital ruling class on entertainment. Like every institution in society, the ruling class directors insure that it serves them not only with their imperialist projects, but also by hiding the nature of class-based social power and to bind the minds of their subjects in service to all aspects of their pursuit of wealth and power. 

This was most viciously demonstrated in the purge of left-wing Hollywood figures following WWII that resulted in many talented people in Hollywood losing their careers. Nowadays, the screening process to select those who will serve the ruling class is much more subtle, but very effective, and extends to every ideologically sensitive institution.

Stopping Israel

Click here to access article by Bashir Abu-Manneh from Jacobin. 

It will take years for Gaza to recover from the Israeli army’s material destruction, and even longer for Palestinians’ psychological scars, grief, and wounds to heal — if, that is, Israel allows them to live without bombs and invasions in the future.

The fact that Israel can repeat Gaza 2008-9, destroy even more infrastructure, and kill even more Palestinians, is troubling for all those who believed that the public outcry and outrage of the past would at least put some constraints on Israeli state conduct.

Why is it, then, that we find ourselves again faced with such a grim actuality? Why is it that Israel is given a free hand to deal so violently with the Palestinians? What could put constraints on Israel’s behavior in the future?

Most aware people know the answers to the first two questions, but the author argues that answers to the third question will require action on the part of us.

Genocide becomes mainstream in Israeli discourse

Click here to access article by Yazan al-Saadi from Al Akhbar. 

Over the course of Israel’s latest brutal attack on the besieged Gaza Strip this past month, a recurring narrative peddling the notion of genocide as a tactic to be used against the Palestinians has become prevalent, indicating a significant shift of extremist rhetoric from the fringes of society to its mainstream. 

The author then goes on to supply numerous pieces of evidence (with links) from Israeli sources to support his thesis. 

History has shown that this pariah state was born dripping with the blood of terrorism, and has continued throughout its brief existence to maintain itself with violence. It seems that terrorism, apartheid, and genocide can succeed if backed by other powerful states--at least for awhile. (see this, this, this, and this.

Washington plans for world war

Click here to access article by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site. 

A remarkable document published July 31 on US military planning calls for the Pentagon to prepare to wage as many as half a dozen wars at the same time, including wars in which the antagonist possesses nuclear weapons.

HRW: Human Rights Watch or Hypocritical Representatives of Washington? (Part 2)

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser from New Eastern Outlook.

...the function of HRW runs far deeper than simply presenting information in a biased way. Rather, HRW shapes the narratives of conflicts, narratives which become solidified through repetition, and which eventually become regarded as undeniable facts.

Moreover, the language HRW employs, far from being simply stylistic choices, is deliberately utilized to obscure the reality of war zones in the service of the Empire. This is undoubtedly the case with the Israel/Palestine conflict where Israeli actions are never outright war crimes, while Palestinian ones are. It is equally true of Ukraine. This is also the case in Libya, Syria, and Venezuela, countries where HRW has played a critical role in constructing narratives in the interests of its financier and corporate paymasters, not to mention of course the US foreign policy agenda.

As Oysters Die, Climate Policy Goes on the Stump

Click here to access article by Coral Davenport from The NY Times. (addendum added to commentary)


When capitalist operations are directly affected by climate changes due to the excessive burning of fossil fuels, they and their hired government employees become concerned. Here in the area of the globe where I hang out, a major industry, oyster farming, is being threatened; and Gov. Inslee is sounding the alarm.

In his recent efforts he cites scientists who say that a global increase in carbon emissions from burning coal and oil has raised carbon dioxide levels in the oceans to unprecedented levels, translating to heavily acidic waters that are deadly to shellfish and other marine life. A major scientific report released in May, the National Climate Assessment, found that the United States’ northwestern waters are among the world’s most acidic. 

However, don't get your hopes up that capitalists really want to do anything serious about curtailing the use of fossil fuels to feed their growth machine. What Inslee really wants is to promote other industries which the region is well-positioned to exploit.

Mr. Inslee argues that in the state of Microsoft and Boeing and where science and technology drive much of the economy, denying the science of climate change is a losing political stance. “This is a scientifically literate state,” Mr. Inslee said. Washington [state], he said, is positioned in a low-carbon economy to design and build new kinds of energy technology, like solar panels and software for the electric grid. “It can be a jobs generator, and my state wants to get in the game,” he said.

Capitalists and their representatives always talk about creating jobs, but that is always a public relations way of expressing a desire to promote big corporations like Boeing and Microsoft. Jobs are always regarded as an expense by capitalists, and as such are deducted from income on corporations' financial statements. Hence, corporate CEOs are always looking for ways to reduce job costs by introducing new machines to replace workers, by cutting back on payroll expenses like health care, busting unions, outsourcing jobs to cheap labor countries like Bangladesh, etc. 

Addendum @ 7PM: While it is good to promote solar and other forms of alternative energy, they cannot meet the huge energy requirements of capitalist enterprises. Hence, capitalist ruling classes will continue to burn fossil fuels which, in turn, cause the greenhouse effect in our atmosphere, acidifying the oceans, releasing methane, melting the icecaps, flooding highly populated areas of the world, and leading us inevitably to catastrophic climate destabilization and human extinction.

Bubbles in the Sea, Craters in Earth Spark New Methane Worries

Click here to access article by Jon Queally from Common Dreams. 

Evidence for one of the long-feared feedback loops caused by global warming and the burning of fossil fuels is starting to appear in Siberia and nearby seas. Scientists worry that this may be the start of runaway climate destabilization.

Seen by a team of international scientists led by Professor Örjan Gustafsson from Stockholm University travelling in the Eastern Siberian Arctic Ocean, the release of methane has long been feared by climatologists who suggest that a warming planet could trigger a mass melting of what are called methane hydrates—a frozen form of potent greenhouse gas methane trapped in permafrost or beneath the ocean floor.

Global Warming Deniers Become More Desperate By the Day

Click here to access article by David Suzuki from Common Dreams.

Capitalists love right-wing Christians who are helping to deny ever increasing evidence of impending climate destabilization caused by their rampant growth machine with faith-based statements like this:

"We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence—are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception."

How The World Bank & IMF Plan to "Dismantle" Ukrainian Economy

Click here if you wish to access the transcript of the 5:44m interview with Michael Hudson from Real News Network.

 

Einstein’s theory

Click here to access article by Charles B. Anthony from CounterFire (Britain). 

You can dress genocide up in the cloth of democracy and freedom; many will buy it– the BBC for one – but the public worldwide are not that stupid, not anymore anyway. Aided by live unhampered footage direct from source, the Israeli propaganda machine is on the back foot. It may be able to convince an Israeli public cocooned in a frenzy of manufactured fear, but all the world can see right now, apart from those in western ivory towers, are mountains of dead Palestinian children. The cold revolving door of stock-excuses no longer sanitizes the hands of the killers, their masters or their masters’ friends. The emperor is naked, covered in blood and eating children.

Anthony refers to Einstein's open letter to the NY Times in 1948 co-signed by many other prominent Jews to warn Americans about the menace of the extreme Zionists that were growing the pariah state of Israel to pose his more moral argument against the recent massacre of Palestinians. These prominent Jews knew fascism when they saw it, but somehow these extreme Zionists managed to grow this pariah state anyway. Why?

Were they so exceptionally clever to pull the wool over so many eyes in the US, the BBC, and much of the world? Although by referring to the letter and it's content which accurately saw the founding fathers of Israel as fascists, the liberal Anthony doesn't seem to understand what fascism really is--or possibly he doesn't want you to understand. 

Is it only manifested in terrorism, brutality, or in crimes against humanity? No, no, and no! It is capitalist rule without the veneer of civil liberties, controlled elections, representative government and all the rest of the fake features which they have applied over the past 200 years to provide legitimate cover for their system of exploitation. Whenever their system is under stress, they bring out the hidden fist of violence against whoever threatens them--whether nearby enemies, labor movements, or their own domestic populations.

This truth explains why they have succeeded so well despite this early warning. The US ruling capitalist class along with their British counterparts saw Israeli fascism for what it was: a ruthless dedication to private ownership of economies. They also saw the usefulness of such a state as an armed fortress in the Middle East to insure Anglo-American access to the abundant oil and gas resources of the region. They have done everything to nurture and support it.

The Dinosaur from the Sixties

Click here to access article by Philip A. Farruggio from Wold News Trust. 

There is a lot views that I can identify with in this article. Farruggio and I are roughly of the same generation. While I didn't live in Brooklyn, I have lived in large cities in the West. Otherwise, I wonder rather bewildered by what this country has become, and feeling like a "Stranger In A Strange Land".

He seems to think our generation was superior, but I think that is naive. Comparing protests now which he sees as merely sporadic with protests during the 1960s, he writes:

In the late 60s this was not the case. As the Vietnam War limped on and on, more and more Americans took to the streets in protest. We closed my campus at Brooklyn College in May of 1970 to protest the illegal bombing of Cambodia. Hundreds of colleges nationwide did the same. There was a motivated and well run national movement to end that war and bring our troops home. Civil disobedience was prevalent throughout our great nation. For every act of violent demonstration by protestors, there were literally hundreds of instances of peaceful dissent. Guess what? The Military Industrial Empire had to finally alter its agenda and back off a bit.

Also, I don't think that we protestors were mostly responsible for the Empire backing off. They were defeated by Vietnamese peasants. 

The directors of the growing Empire learned a few lessons from that experience. The most important one was to have an all-volunteer army so that only those gung-ho or couldn't find a job went into their armies. Especially since the collapse of the economy in 2008, they haven't had much of a problem finding recruits.  

They've also beefed up their management of media to hide their barbarous activities throughout the world and to keep people focused on trivia, and their industries have produced all kinds of electronic gadgets to keep people distracted and entertained. Then, of course, there was the 9/11 project and the terrorist bogeymen coming to get us.

It was also very clever of them to hire a person with black skin to fill the office of "President" and to handle their government's public relations. Liberals now hesitate to protest against this government because they don't want to be seen as racist. They learned this from Zionists who very successfully played that trick against people who would otherwise criticize Israeli actions.

California continues fracking through the drought

Click here to access article by Sara Sullivan from Climate Connections.

“We’re talking about a triple threat to our water from fracking,” says Adam Scow, the California Director for Food & Water Watch. The first threat: The fracking process requires a lot of water, which then becomes unsuitable for any other use. [...] It’s also possible that fracking fluid could leach into underground aquifers, and of course the toxic wastewater left over from fracking has to be disposed of somehow — and therein lies the second threat to California’s water supply. [...] The third threat to California’s water supply, according to Scow, is that all of the oil and gas we’ve produced via fracking will eventually get burned and thus contribute to global warming, “which leads to more droughts.” 

I wonder which people will finally choose: water or gas to drive their vehicles?

'Massive Environmental Disaster' in Canada as Toxic Tailing Pond Floods Waterways

Click here to access article by Deirdre Fulton from Common Dreams.

Here is the latest environmental disaster report as a result of corporate operations to feed the voracious energy appetite of capitalist industry.

"You can't release that amount of toxic metals into ecosystems without having long-term repercussions," Hart told QMI Agency. "If they're able to clean some of it up that would be helpful, but they'll never be able to clean it all up — those metals don't go anywhere."

Will Climate Change Lead to Conflict or Cooperation?

Click here to access article by Joel Jaeger from Inter Press Service.

This article seems to represent the latest take on climate destabilization by our capitalist ruling class after denying the reality for so long: it's all so complicated, we don't know enough, and some people wish that "the whole debate would just go away". 

Stories Of Extermination: Silent = Complicit

Click here to access article by Mickey Z. from World News Trust. 

The author reminds us of the fact that there is nothing exceptional about the many who still remain silent regarding the latest massacre of Palestinians. He reminds us of the real history--in contrast to the fictional history of our indoctrination--of the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 30s that was greeted by capitalist elites everywhere who for a long time overlooked the atrocities committed by their German counterparts.

Hitler's "Final Solution" took the lives of roughly six million Jews along with millions more Slavs, Eastern Europeans, Roma, homosexuals, labor leaders, communists, and others suspected of such “crimes.” If decency and morality played any role, the United States would have taken action against Germany some time during the 1930s.

On the contrary, the U.S. business class had nothing but love for the Nazi regime.

Of course, this covering up of crimes by ruling classes has been true throughout recorded history which, of course, is only about 2% of human history. In our current era of capitalist rule only one ethical principle is consistently adhered to by ruling classes: if its good for the bottom line on financial statements, it is good. They justify this with general propaganda and indoctrination about the rule of market principles which are always neutral, and in the end always benefit humanity. 

You see this principle played out in current world events. If the current ruling capitalist classes and their satellites of the Empire were concerned about genocidal events, they would take serious actions against Israel. Instead, they are taking actions against Russia which has done nothing to justify sanctions except to oppose Empire subversive activities in Syria and Ukraine. And, of course, Empire rulers have a long history of crimes against humanity in pursuit of their ethical principle.

When even Zionists admit the project has failed

Click here to access article by Yvonne Ridley from Middle East Monitor.

Of course, what she means by the title is that this project massacre has failed in the world of public opinion.
 
Ridley starts off her essay by stating what should be obvious: "We should all remember that not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews." To support this she cites comments made by several prominent American Zionists who are critical about the latest Israeli massacre of Palestinians. She also reported on one shocking article written by an Israeli entitled "When Genocide is Permissible" and posted in The Times of Israel (since retracted). 

Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack

Click here to access article by Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept. 

The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.

Old Mole Variety Hour August 4 2014 [two segments of the hour long program]

Click here to access this morning's broadcast of the "Old Mole Variety Hour" from KBOO radio station in Portland, Oregon. These are two segments that I highly recommend.

Segment One (from the start to 23:50m): Bill Resnick talks with local scholar of policing and government repression, Kristian Williams [author of Our Enemies in Blue], about how the police plant informants and provocateurs in leftists organizations, and how movements should deal with that.  

By the way, the new website created by Williams is "DCSC: thinking critically about security, surveillance, and counterinsurgency"

Segment Two (from 25:00m to 31:50m): Clayton Morgareidge offers a commentary on why liberals are not the change we want to see in the world.

Electronic Communications Surveillance

Click here to access article by Lauren Regan from Monthly Review.

This piece offers one of the best single sources of information that I have found that covers a broad spectrum of issues related to our ruling class's surveillance programs and methods including the integration of corporations with government spy agencies, legal challenges, implications for activists, etc. It is loaded with additional links to other sources for more specialized information.

Regan starts off with a caveat:

...there is no absolute protection against surveillance. You can make it extraordinarily difficult for people or technologies to gather your data, but no protection is absolutely impassable.

However, later on she further clarifies this statement:

...there is no absolute protection against surveillance. You can make it extraordinarily difficult for people or technologies to gather your data, but no protection is absolutely impassable.

Cambodia and Western Fabrication of History

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek posted at The Greanville Post.

Vltchek has traveled to Cambodia many times to uncover the true history of that region during the tragic years of the 1970s. Like an excellent journalist that he is, he not only interviews people in Phnom Penh, the capital, but travels into the rural regions to interview numerous people, both ordinary peasants and local leaders, to tease out the truth of those years. 

There are many inconsistent stories, but most of these are between city dwellers in Phnom Penh and those in the countryside. It is clear that the stories from the capital have been very much influenced by US authorities who have always framed events their to suit their imperial aims in southeast Asia, especially the heavily promoted stories about "The Killing Fields" of the Khmer Rouge. One theme is consistent: Cambodia was subject to concentrated carpet bombing that created chaos and rage in the countryside.  (See also this, this, and this.)

During this time (late 1960s and 1970s) I was aware of the fact of the illegal carpet bombing by following independent journalists of that time. One I remember well--Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett whose reports I read in I. F. Stone's Weekly; meanwhile Western authorities tried every means to discredit his reporting as is evident even today in Wikipedia's entry. In the 1980s Western mainstream media began cranking out reports which constructed there own Empire-serving myth (similar to the Rwanda Massacre) about the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields while omitting any coverage of the horrendous war crimes committed by US leaders against that country.  

What has never ceased to amaze me over the past 60 years is the gullibility of my fellow Americans. They have been lied to so often, but most of them still swallow every lie told to them today.

The Pariah State

Click here to access article by Evan Jones posted on CounterPunch. (Jones is a retired political economist from the University of Sydney.)

This is one of the most devastating critiques of the state of Israel that I have seen. Evans begins with a number of historical quotations by Zionist and other observers which illustrate that the current barbarous actions of this pariah state are not an aberration, but continue the pattern created by Zionist ancestors in collaboration with European ruling classes.

There are numerous bread-and-butter tyrannies – some of which (foremost, Saudi Arabia), curiously, we have as friends. But Israel is unique. Israel was conceived as necessitating ethnic cleansing, and was created and is sustained by ethnic cleansing. Israel was created and is sustained by terrorism. Israel is, sui generis, a force for terrorism and ethnic cleansing.

There is the view, fashionable amongst middle-of-the-road optimists harbouring a two-state solution pie-in-the-sky, that the problem is that the state has been appropriated by the political Right and the Far Right. The good Israel has been hijacked by the nasties. On the contrary. The current Israel is the natural heir of its origins and subsequent entrenchment of ethnically-based legal and cultural structures. Israel now produces racists as a majority voice, with citizens imbued with universalist values reduced to near powerlessness.

Dress the Gaza situation up all you like, but the truth hurts

Click here to access article by Robert Fisk from The Independent (Britain).

This veteran journalist, who has specialized in covering events in the Middle East, describes the difficulties that Western ruling class media directors are having with their journalists' coverage of the latest Israeli massacre of Palestinians.

There was a time when our politicians and media had one principal fear when covering Middle East wars: that no one should ever call them anti-Semitic.

So corrosive, so vicious was this charge against any honest critic of Israel that merely to bleat the word “disproportionate” – as in any normal wartime exchange rate of Arab-to-Israeli deaths – was to provoke charges of Nazism by Israel’s would-be supporters. Sympathy for Palestinians would earn the sobriquet “pro-Palestinian”, which, of course, means “pro-terrorist”.

Or so it was until the latest bloodbath in Gaza....

Groundwater Depletion in Colorado River Basin Poses Big Risk to Water Security

Click here to access article by Sandra Postel from National Geographic. 

Although the recently released study using NASA data has alarmed many in the ruling One Percent, you won't see any reference to the gargantuan appetite of their capitalist operations to consume ever more amounts of resources in order to keep their economy growing--simply because it must. 

Whereas most media agencies typically leave off after providing their usual sensationalism, Postel offers solutions--but they won't upset any capitalist. She suggests four, but they boil down to water use efficiency and better water monitoring. Never mind the melting icecaps, forest fires, extreme weather events all caused by climate destabilization because of excessive burning of fossil fuels; likewise ignore the huge amounts of water necessary for shale-fracking operations to obtain oil and gas. No, let's avoid any wider perspective that might raise questions about the economic system. 

Russian deputy PM mocks Obama by tweeting ‘unmanly’ photo of president

Click here to access article by Josie Ensor from The Telegraph. (satire?)

It very much looks like these two capitalist gangs are getting ready for a serious fight. Let us pray that their inter-denominational capitalist fights don't spill over into major wars that affect us in the 99 Percent as is happening tragically for the people in Ukraine, Libya, and the Middle East (mostly due to Empire schemes). It appears that the Empire's rich are taking this spat seriously by building "panic rooms" in their mansions. On the other hand, it could be that they are just afraid of us--but who knows?

Meanwhile, the Chinese gang is preparing to be dragged into this capitalist fight for global dominance by building new weapons systems to deliver nuclear warheads. Oh, "what a wonderful world" we live in!

HRW: Human Rights Watch or Hypocrites Representing Washington (Part 1)

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser from New Eastern Outlook.

By examining the way in which HRW documented, investigated, and presented findings from the conflicts in Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, Libya, Syria, and Venezuela, it becomes clear that the organization, though theoretically objective and “disinterested,” is in fact an integral part of the western imperial system. Though HRW has done some good work, and likely will in the future, this cannot be taken as evidence that the organization is somehow not a part of the Empire. On the contrary, without HRW and similar organizations, Washington and its allies would not be able to champion themselves as “defenders of human rights,” “beacons of democracy,” and “humanitarian powers.”

Racism is the Foundation of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge

Click here to access article by Joel Beinin from Stanford University Press Blog.

The international community typically sees the manifestations of Israel’s violent racism only when they erupt as assaults on the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, or Lebanon.  But Israel’s increasingly poisonous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim public culture prepares the ground of domestic public opinion long before any military operation and immunizes the army from most criticism of its “excesses.” 

As World Condemns Attack on Gaza, US Resupplies Israel with Weapons

Click here to access article by Jon Queally from Common Dreams.  

Your tax dollars at work supporting another Israeli massacre of Palsestinians:

Pentagon acknowledges recent release of ammunition stockpiles for IDF as Palestinian death toll approaches 1,400 people in three-week attack decried by humanitarians across the globe

The Atlantic Axis and the Making of a War in Ukraine

Click here to access article by Christof Lehmann from New Eastern Outlook. 

Lehmann brings together a number of geopolitical incidents from recent years to explain them in terms of Anglo-American Empire interests. The current Empire like all previous empires is determined to expand control over territories with a special interest under capitalism to control resources, markets, and labor. Countries that stand in their way become targets as we see now represented by Russia, Iran, and China. In this article Lehmann focues on the targeting of Russia. Control over oil and gas pipelines, subversion in the case of Ukraine, expansion of NATO up to the borders of Russia, and keeping Europe tied to the Empire are a part of this epic and tragic drama as explained by Lehmann.  

A City-Sized Prison-House

Click here to access article by Lori Allen from Stanford University Press Blog.

1.8 million live patrolled and contained like this—that’s about the population of Hamburg, or Detroit in its heyday. It is difficult to convey the utter wrongness of this city-sized prison-house to someone who has not experienced or witnessed the daily indignities and frequent atrocities of the occupation. 

Allen describes in extremely painful detail the prison-like conditions that Gazans face everyday of their lives. Meanwhile, back at the American ranch people are totally unaware of these conditions. 

But that seems to be typical of my fellow Americans who have been lied to endlessly especially over the past sixty years, and still come back to the same mainstream media sources for more lies. The near-term comforts of going along with powerful authorities should not be underestimated. Such people don't have to take responsibility for the evil that is done to others, or incur the sanctions of authorities by challenging their role in creating the evil. However, it is the long-term that I am worried about.

Israel’s Propaganda on “Terror Tunnels”

Click here to access article by Joel Gillin from Muftah.

Gillon does an excellent job of deconstructing Israeli propaganda that is repeated in US's corporate media automatically and ad nauseam.

Use of the “terror” label is but one of many tactics the Israeli government has yet again employed to drum up support among its citizens and the international community for its war in Gaza. The U.S. media has openly embraced Israel’s problematic “terror tunnel” narrative; CNN’s Wolf Blitzer even paid a visit to these subterranean structures to show just how much effort went into building them. In compiling his report, Blitzer allowed Lt. Col. Azouli to go unchallenged in his claims that the tunnels facilitate attacks on “regular people, children, women, men” in Israel.

Thus far, the U.S. media has willfully failed to mention or even notice the obvious lack of evidence showing the tunnels have ever been used for terrorism.

So, who needs evidence? Lies and insinuations seem to work just as well.

The Media Ignores the CIA in Ukraine

Click here to access article by Bill Blunden from The Greanville Post.

I love Blunden's subtitle "Pay No Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain" because that is what most media in the US do all the time. In order to maintain the facade of capitalism's "democratic" liberties and benign foreign policies, they must do this; and maintaining the facade is the primary mission of ruling class's corporate media. 

So far the bulk of the American media’s coverage of the Ukraine deftly sidesteps the CIA’s role.

Yet all of the signs are there. Former CIA Officer John Stockwell explained that “stirring up deadly ethnic and racial strife has been a standard technique used by the CIA.[4]” Students of history (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, and Nicaragua) will also recognize many of the hallmarks of a covert destabilization operation.

Crime (Israel) and punishment (Russia)

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online. 

He uses the Orwellian "Two Minutes Hate" as a metaphor describing the Empire's policies toward Russia.

Not even Hollywood could come up with such a plot; Israel gets away with unlawful premeditated mass murder of civilians, while Russia gets framed for a (smaller-scale) airborne mass murder of civilians that has all the makings of being set up by the Kiev vassals of Russia's Western "partners". 

.... Let's follow the facts. 

And this perceptive Brazilian journalist has some interesting and depressing insights on the outcome of the inspection of the "black boxes" from the downed Malaysian Airlines MH17, the US and expected European sanctions against Russia, and where it all might lead.

How Fracking Is Blowing Up Balance Sheets of Oil and Gas Companies

Click here to access article by Wolf Richter from Wolf Street.

Richter has provided more recent evidence to support a thesis which long-time energy analyst Gail Tverberg has been hammering on for a number of years: that cheap, easily accessible oil and gas have been used up; thus the costs for future fossil fuel based energy is going to climb steeply to the point where it will have dramatic impacts on the economy.  

Because capitalism functions like a pyramid scheme that relies on future growth, the implications of this thesis for capitalism is staggering; so staggering that capitalists, who are addicted to this system because it provides them with so much wealth and power, refuse to face reality. (This scheme has worked for capitalists in the past because humans had not yet reached the finite resource limits that they are now approaching, nor have they been faced with impending climate destabilization.) It's very much like one of the end stages that have been described by Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:

As the reality of loss is hard to face, one of the first reactions to follow the loss is Denial. What this means is that the person is trying to shut out the reality or magnitude of his/her situation, and begins to develop a false, preferable reality.

Thus, they keep indulging in fantasies like migrating to other planets, or promising that technology will come up with new sources of cheap energy. One of their favorite fantasies is fusion energy--but the reality of cold fusion is far different. As physicist Tom Murphy expressed the enormous problems of fusion energy so well:

No one can truly say whether we will achieve fusion in a way that is commercially practical. If teams of PhDs have spent over 60 years wailing on the problem while spending tens of billions of dollars, I think it’s safe to use our fusion quest as the definition of hard. It’s a much larger challenge than sending men to the Moon. We have no historical precedent for an arduous technological problem on this scale that ultimately succeeded to become a ho-hum commercial reality. But for that matter, I don’t think we have any precedent for something on this scale that has failed. In short, we’re out of our depths and can’t be cocky about predictions in either direction.

1 in 3 Americans Have a Debt in Collections: Study

Click here to access article by Sarah Lazare from Common Dreams. 

At least 35 percent of U.S. adults have a debt in collections, according to a study (pdf) released Tuesday by the Urban Institute in conjunction with Encore Capital Group's Consumer Credit Research Institute.

This amounts to 77 million people with credit histories....

The Art of War: NATO’s Global Offensive

Click here to access article by Manlio Dinucci from Il Manifesto (Italian publication) via Global Research and translated into English. 

This Italian news source reveals to we Americans what US corporate media is not telling us: that our tax dollars are very busy at work maintaining the Empire's global operations.

No holiday this summer for NATO; it’s working overtime. In preparation for the Summit of Heads of State and Government on September 4-5 in Newport, Wales, NATO will set down the blueprint for ‘”strategic adaptation” for military initiatives directed against Russia.

As already announced by U.S. General Philip Breedlove, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, it “will cost money, time and effort.” 

Palestinians cram overcrowded UN shelter in Gaza

Click here to access article from AFP, a French news service, via Al Akhbar.

The report provides a disturbing picture of what life is like for Palestinians in one of 85 UN shelters:

Dozens of displaced Gaza families flooded into a UN school early Tuesday after Israel warned them to leave their homes, struggling to set up camp in a cramped, dirty courtyard.

Hundreds of homeless Gazans were already living there, with this school in the northern town of Jabalia packed to overflowing.

Rubbish piled up outside the school walls, filling the air with a foul stench, as women used brooms and muddy water to clean up their new accommodation -- festering classrooms packed with dirty mattresses and bedclothes.

Meanwhile, back at the "official" headquarters of the Empire, the US Congress, we learn what our Zionist-funded representatives are doing. 

As the civilian death toll in Gaza continues to climb, the U.S. House of Representatives has introduced a symbolic resolution—backed by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee—blaming Hamas for the bloodshed and condemning them for the alleged use of "human shields."

The middle class is 20 percent poorer than it was in 1984

Click here to access article by Matt O'Brien from The Washington Post.

Referring to a recently released study by the Russell Sage Foundation, O'Brien writes:

Nostalgia is just about the only thing the middle class can still afford. That's because median wealth is about 20 percent lower today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was in 1984. 

Yes, that's three lost decades. ....

At this rate, it won't be long until the American Dream isn't even a memory for the middle class. 

The graph at the left says it all, except what Wolf Richter points out: "What the report wisely left untouched is how the real winners of the Fed’s policies, the 99.9th percentile, made out."