Europe’s Stark Choice: Resignation or Revolution?

Click here to access article by "Don Quijones", a British ex-patriot living mostly in Spain, from his blog Raging Bull-Shit. 

In the wake of the defeat of the Greek people by the European branch of the capitalist Empire, this author sees Europe as a whole heading for defeat. Like the Greeks, they will be confronted by a stark choice of suffering "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" by surrendering to bankers and assorted capitalists, or "by opposing [with a revolution] end them" but risking a "thousand natural shocks" or even death.

...the global financial system’s days are already numbered. In short, the system is already buckling under the combined weight of unsustainable debt, unpayable pension schemes and a derivatives market whose total value dwarfs global GDP by magnitudes that exceed all human logic.

The question is, once it does collapse, who’s going to pick up the pieces and rebuild a new, more sustainable system in its ashes? Will it be us, the people, or will it be the same bankers, central bankers and heavily compromised political half-wits that got us here in the first place? Will we bravely stake our claim to a new future, or resign ourselves, in fear and despair, to the global bankers’ dystopian nirvana?

Whatever choice Europeans make in the coming months and years, one thing is clear: the human, social and economic costs will be tremendous either way. For the unpleasant truth is that we have allowed ourselves to be lead so far down the rabbit hole of perpetual growth and exponential debt that reemerging into the light of day will take years — perhaps even decades — of collective struggle and sacrifice.

The Geopolitics and Economics of the Iran Nuclear Deal

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

Draitser explains why Empire directors made this deal with Iran.

Anyone who understands the imperial and hegemonic agenda of the US should immediately understand that there is an ulterior motive for Washington in securing this deal, one which has nothing to do with morality, peace, or cooperation. Instead, the US wants to transform Iran from a regional and global adversary into something of an asset. This is not to say that Tehran and Washington will become instant allies, but rather the idea that Iran could be made into a neutral party, one that will cease to be an obstacle to the US agenda.

Essentially, the strategy relies on the tried and true colonial tactic of “divide and conquer,” or perhaps more appropriate in this case, “divide and neutralize.” What the US would like to achieve is a sort of fracturing of the Iranian political establishment, where the business elites with tremendous influence in Iranian society will have a vested interest in not creating or exacerbating tensions with their associates in the West, thereby making Iran into a de facto partner for western-led hegemony. Were Iran’s political leadership to become less assertive in the region and internationally thanks to internal pressure from powerful economic and business interests, this would greatly benefit US plans, and of course those of its allies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and, despite its belligerent rhetoric, Israel.

This must be understood within the larger geopolitical challenge that Empire directors are confronted with by other state/capitalist elites that refuse to submit to their domination:

...the US wants to remake Iran from a bulwark against US-NATO-GCC-Israeli hegemony, into a weapon to be used as a wedge against BRICS-SCO-EEU-New Silk Road cooperation.

We may have already committed ourselves to 6-meter sea-level rise

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder. 

It's clear to me that one major problem, among others, in arousing people to take action to prevent climate destabilization is the time scale which many humans use--at best, about a few decades ahead, but typically much shorter time periods. Capitalists mostly focus on the next quarters' financial statements and do everything they can daily to enhance the bottom lines. Because capitalists rule over societies, their time scale informs all discussions carried by their media and all other ideological institutions. 

In this piece Dolack first addresses this problem indirectly by stating facts that we humans have already created climate destabilization to a marked degree. He ends this piece by explaining how the latest stage of capitalism called neoliberalism is accelerating the problem.

Capitalism, Green or Otherwise, Is ''Ecological Suicide''

Click here to access a review by David Klein of a book entitled Green Capitalism: The God that Failed by Richard Smith posted on TruthOut.

The climate crisis is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. At the current rate of global greenhouse gas emissions, warming of the planet will shoot past two degrees Celsius by mid-century and reach 4°C to 6°C beyond pre-industrial averages by 2100. The magnitude of the impending catastrophe was eloquently described by Hans Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, when he said, "the difference between two and four degrees is human civilization …" 

Zuckerberg's Internet.org will control what billions do online

Click here to access article from No Fake Internet campaign.

This article provides another reason not to use Facebook.

Profiting from Global Warming [A must listen-to interview]

Click here to access this 51:30m audio recording of a recent interview with independent journalist and author McKenzie Funk from a listener sponsored radio station (KPFA) in Berkeley, California.

Funk is a journalist who has undertaken a six year study involving travel to 24 countries to find out of what is being done about climate destabilization. Well, he found out that a lot was being done in the short-term to enrich the already rich, but almost nothing to save humanity in the long-term.

Getting rich off of global warming may seem like the ultimate cynical business plan. But corporations are hedging their bets on unchecked climate change and the opportunities it affords. Journalist McKenzie Funk reports about the very lucrative business to be made from the deleterious effects of climate change, from opened shipping lanes in the melting Arctic to newly exposed mineral deposits, from food production on previously inhospitable land to the sale of artificial snow to the Alps.

Although this was not elaborated on in the interview--and it should have--I think you will agree with me that he concluded that the capitalist system was the problem because of the way it trains and indoctrinates people to function to enhance corporate profits (see the concept of "trained incapacity" here and here). This lends support to my blog's thesis that all the major problems facing humanity today will not be solved until we end the rule of capitalism. Only then will we be able to create a system than can enable humanity to solve the climate crisis along with the many problems related to gross inequality which capitalism creates. Unfortunately, time is running out. Our expiry date is fast approaching. Of course, this doesn't mean that we should give up. No, it means that action to end this deadly system is more urgent than ever before.

Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup

Click here to access article by Evaggelos Vallianatos from Independent Science News. 

The banning of DDT in America in 1972 did not bring about any rethinking of factory farming and its addiction to deleterious pesticides. In fact, large industrialized and pesticide-dependent farms are now crowding the planet. Their owners preach a war on hunger but in actual practice their war is directed against the natural world and small farmers and peasants. And despite their propaganda for feeding the world, they only produce about a third of the world food. Peasants, not industrialized farmers, feed most of the world’s people. But industrialized farmers are responsible for huge harm done to the natural world and people. That harm comes in the form of global warming and the poisoning of wildlife, rivers, drinking water, and food.

Seeking War to the End of the World

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews.

If the neoconservatives have their way again, U.S. ground troops will reoccupy Iraq, the U.S. military will take out Syria’s secular government (likely helping Al Qaeda and the Islamic State take over), and the U.S. Congress will not only kill the Iran nuclear deal but follow that with a massive increase in military spending.

Like spraying lighter fluid on a roaring barbecue, the neocons also want a military escalation in Ukraine to burn the ethnic Russians out of the east, and the neocons dream of spreading the blaze to Moscow with the goal of forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin.

This is another partial exposé of the "neocon" phenomenon that should be more accurately labeled as a Zionist Fifth Column (ZFC) in the US. Their allegiance to Israel has little to do with traditional American conservatism except that its adherents, who are right-wing Jews on steroids and their right-wing Christian pals, have become enamored with the use of violence to attain wealth and power while faithfully advocating strong support of the racist European colony in the Middle East called Israel. If this sounds familiar, it is because we've already seen this in the last century when it was identified as fascism or Nazism.

I noticed this morning that Zionist influence appears to be extending to the use of words. Traditional American conservatives are now referred to as "paleoconservatives". The prefix "paleo" of course refers to ancient, and as such has a rather pejorative connotation in contrast to "neoconservative" which has a mildly positive connotation. But then, of course, we live in an Orwellian age.

Greece’s Lesson For Russia

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog.

Roberts is what is now known as a "paleoconservative" (see my commentary on this neologism here). Somehow he was appointed as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury by the Reagan administration and held other posts in various branches of the government during this administration which was stealthily infected with the doctrine of "neoconservatism" (aka Zionism, a right-wing Jewish form of fascism), a foreign policy component of which was the Wolfowitz doctrine. This doctrine is a variation on the theme of "exceptionalism", as recently avowed by our (official) leader Obama.

The Wolfowitz doctrine, the basis of US foreign and military policy, declares
that the rise of Russia or any other country cannot be permitted, because the US is the Uni-power and cannot tolerate any constraint on its unilateral actions. 

As a "paleoconservative" he believes, like many critics (even many self-identified "leftists") of this neoliberal stage of capitalism, that capitalism was just fine before it was deregulated. It is ironic that he served in an administration which brought in so many Zionists, facilitated de-regulation, and launched the neoliberal stage of capitalism that he so often rants and raves about today. Perhaps it was because of this experience that he feels betrayed, and this may account for his many rants and raves, although quite well-informed, in recent years.

Anyway, in this article and many others he makes some valid criticisms of the various policies and actions occurring in our brave new world of neoliberal capitalism.

See an example of how neoliberalism is currently functioning in Greece by reading an article entitled "Country for sale? Buffett buys a Greek island for 15 million euros…so does Johnny Depp". 

Propaganda Wave Portends Invasion of Syria

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook. 

This is a followup piece to his June 26th article entitled "US To Begin Invasion of Syria" which I posted and commented on here. I tend to think that the Brookings' article was not an announcement, but more of a justification of what was already planned. As such, I think it too could be considered as a part of the "propaganda wave" in support of a more direct attack on Syria by Empire forces (American and British). In any case, Cartalucci provides updated evidence and cogent arguments that the plan is now in full operation.

It is clear that this premeditated and documented conspiracy has been fully implemented, manifesting itself as the “Islamic State” which is clearly being used both as a proxy military force with which to wage war against Western enemies, as well as a pretext for justifying Western military aggression around the world. It is also being used conveniently to maintain an iron grip at home via an increasingly Orwellian police state predicated on “fighting the threat of terrorism.”

As others have hinted at, the West is also intentionally promoting a strategy of tension to predictably divide the world’s population into two camps – those that back Western neo-liberalism, and those that back the medieval methods of ISIS and periphery ideologies. Those in the middle are intentionally marginalized by the vast Western media, and even in the alternative media, cognitive infiltration has helped mute the voices of reason and accelerate this global conflict.

Higher Education in the US

Click here if wish to directly access cartoon from occasional links & commentary
on economics, culture and society.

Clearly this was drawn from a professor's point of view. However, professors are just as guilty, if not more so, of wanting to stay with ruling class approved ideas ("preconceived notions") simply because their careers and/or academic tenureships are at stake.

 

Who owns the public debt? [commentary updated at 4:45 PM Seattle time]

Click here to access article by Jonathan Nitzan from Real-World Economics Review Blog. 

Correlation of debt ownership and 1% wealth

Nitzan provides a brief introduction to what looks to me like some very significant research focusing on the owners of public debt undertaken by "Sandy Hager, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs." This introduction makes reference to three works by Hager: his doctoral dissertation and articles by him published in two academic journals, New Political Economy and Socio-Economic Review. I have downloaded and printed out the 22.3 page article from the latter journal which I intend to study.

I, too, have long noticed that very little has been written about the owners of public debt. Instead the overwhelming emphasis has been about the debtors. This, I believe, is no mere happenstance. It illustrates once again the power of the ruling capitalist class to divert the public's attention away from them, because to do so might call into question some disturbing questions about the way the system has been functioning to create concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few in the capitalist ruling class while diminishing the influence of ordinary people (non-capitalists). Hager's findings corresponds to the revelations of economist Thomas Piketty whose research concluded that capitalism causes inequality. With my hurried perusal of the report, I found the following revealing statement on page 3.

Over the past three decades widely owned pension funds have seen their share of the public debt fall drastically, while mutual funds, which are heavily concentrated in the hands of the top one percent of US households, have seen their share increase. The findings therefore point toward the emergence of a new aristocracy of finance, composed of giant money managers and wealthy households.

Countering the neo-Cold Warriors

Click here to access article by Wayne Madsen from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

Obama and Kerry were quick to distance themselves from «Fighting Joe» Dunford’s saber rattling before the Senate committee. However, if they wanted to truly reset relations with Russia, Kerry could fire Nuland, Obama could pull Dunford’s nomination, and both could ask NATO to request a new Supreme Commander. However, as President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his 1961 Farewell Address about the menace of the «military-industrial complex», Obama and Kerry are powerless to get rid of those who were placed in power by what has now become a «military-intelligence-contractor» complex.

Are the neo-cold warriors merely crazy figures acting out a script like we saw in the 1960s film "Dr. Strangelove"? Are they the "bad cops" (counter-posed to the "good cops" of the ruling class behind the Obama administration) that the Empire uses to bully their perceived antagonists? Or are do they represent a real threat to human existence--like a nuclear holocaust--should they take over the leadership of the Empire? What do you think?

Climate threat as grave a risk as nuclear war

Click here to access article by Alex Kirby from Climate News Network.

An international scientific report commissioned by the UK government says the risks of climate change are comparable to those posed by nuclear conflict.

It appears that some members of our ruling capitalist classes are beginning to get the message about climate destabilization and the threat to human life. But don't expect this new awareness to change the way they think about their beloved system, the goose that lays for them so many golden eggs of wealth and power.

Endless enemies - how the US is supporting the Islamic State by fighting it

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from Middle East Eye.

The "Empire of Chaos", as Pepe Escobar likes to call the US-led capitalist Empire, is apparently creating chaos in a big way in Syria and Iraq. They, the Empire directors, are playing a very complicated game in this region and their success in explaining their involvement to the war-weary American public illustrates how grossly gullible most of my fellows Americans are. Even Ahmed can't quite understand the games they are playing aside from the fact that they are feeding the US military-industrial complex with huge benefits:

If you have difficulty understanding this, don’t worry. I don’t understand it either. But what’s clear is that the ever shape-shifting US war on al-Qaeda, IS and Assad, is propping up al-Qaeda, IS and Assad.

Others like Escobar see clearly that chaos keeps both the Empire in overall control of the region and insures the security of their partner-in-crime Israel.

Syriza’s Two Mistakes and Two Lessons

Click here to access article by John Halle from his blog Outrages and Interludes.

Referring to statements made by the Syriza leadership after they caved in to the EU's demands, Halle writes:

What is on display is the disenchantment of liberals who operated on a presumption of good intentions and underlying rationality of elite technocrats.  Radicals such as Lapavistas do not. For them, providing “arguments” to the institutional representatives of capital makes no more sense than addressing a hyena with its fangs clamped on one’s jugular.  The hyena is acting not according to reason but according to its fundamental nature and so are the capitalist hyenas who were the Syriza’s negotiating partners.

The Struggle As The Women We Are: Communiques From The Zapatistas

Click here to access article by the Zapatistas from Upside Down World. 

The article provides an illustration of how the indigenous people in the Chiapas region of Mexico are empowering women as well as men, and constructing bottom-up authority and radical egalitarian political structures to defend their lands and people from the predations of capitalist agencies. In this region activists are fully conscious of the necessity of empowering all people so that the truth expressed in the slogan "the people united can never be defeated" can be fully realized. A "united people" requires that all, or most, people are educated in the realities of existing power structures as well as being empowered themselves within activist organizations.

Meanwhile, read in a Nation report how the people in Central America are fighting back against exploitation of their lands by US and Canadian corporations and interference in their political affairs by US agencies. Better yet, read a piece from Latin American in Movement entitled "7 Reasons to Scrap the $1 Billion Aid Package to Central America". This is another US "aid" bill which would actually worsen conditions for ordinary people in Central American countries while strengthening the existing dictatorships.

Netanyahu disappointed that he can’t launch “devastating war of self-defence” against Iran

Click here to access article from The Pan-Arabia Enquirer. (parody)

US To Begin Invasion of Syria

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.  

Unbeknownst to the general public, their elected politicians do not create the policy that binds their national destiny domestically or within the arena of geopolitics. Instead, corporate-financier funded think tanks do – teams of unelected policymakers which transcend elections, and which produce papers that then become the foundation of legislation rubber stamped by “legislators,” as well as the enumerated talking points repeated ad naseum by the corporate-media.

The above opening statement in this article by Cartalucci contains a profound political insight. I've long been aware that our official government really didn't govern, but only functioned to provide a public facade of "democratic" government. For obvious reasons, what retired Professor Peter Dale Scott refers to as a "deep state" or what others refer to as a "shadow government" in the US is very well hidden by capitalist media and other ruling class propaganda institutions. Various analysts have attempted to tease out the real centers of decision-making that impacts what policies and actions are pursued, and one such important analyst is Cartalucci. Like most others, he sees capitalist think-tanks as being a primary component of the shadow government. 

However, there are many such think-tanks, some obviously more important than others, and a somewhat limited set of opinions are expressed in their publications. It is clear that not all of these policy proposals are acted on. Thus, it would appear that important think-tanks such as Brookings Institution function as clearinghouse for various ruling class ideas. But this raises the question about how individual opinions are processed into actual formal policies and actions of the state? What are the organizational mechanisms that process these opinions? This is the real mystery that is still not well understood by analysts of real political power. 

This is where, I think, Cartalucci sometimes makes some errors. Just because an idea or policy (often camouflaged behind deceptive rhetoric) is floated in one these important think-tanks doesn't necessarily mean that they will be acted on. He seems to think that whatever proposed action that appears in publications form Brookings Institution or Council on Foreign Relations will be implemented. Although these particular think-tanks head the list of the most influential, I don't think that every idea that is floated in their publications will necessarily be transformed into actions. 

Having said that, I think it is very important to follow such articles because they reveal what the real political actors in our ruling class are thinking, and often doing. This focus on what the real Empire political actors are proposing is in sharp contrast to all the wasted time most people spend on what government officials are saying which is what ruling class media always focuses on.

Although the dramatic headline of Cartalucci's article suggests a US invasion, a careful reading of the Brookings document (PDF) suggests something else: a limited US military involvement ("low intensity warfare") along with the armies of their regional cronies to establish independent zones which will gradually dissolve the power of the Assad government. It seems to me that the policy that O'Hanlan proposes in the Brookings paper is already the operative one, and probably has been for some time. Cartalucci's assertions about the document's admissions of past US support for insurgencies is supported in the document. 

What is also clear to me in the Brookings document is the imperial tone of our ruling class. They think that the US and its empire are always completely justified in intervening militarily and otherwise in the affairs of other countries. We can even spy on other governments. This is so because...err...well, we are a special nation, we're an "exceptional" nation. Obama said so himself.

A pharma payment a day keeps US doctors' finances OK

Click here to access article by Charles Ornstein and Ryann Grochowski Jones from ProPublica. 

That doctors receive big money from the pharmaceutical industry is no surprise. The new data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows that such interactions are widespread, with not only doctors, but thousands of dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and chiropractors receiving at least one industry payment from August 2013 to December 2014.

What is being seen for the first time now is how ingrained pharmaceutical companies and their sales reps are in the lives of those who write prescriptions for their products.

Is Mexico Ready For Life Without Its Sugar Daddy?

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

This ex-patriot British blogger, in addition to living in Spain, sometime resides in Mexico (with his wife of Mexican origins) and follows events in that country quite closely. In this article he alerts us to a very important development in Mexican affairs that will impact the nation for years to come. Of course, such an important neoliberal event is not reported in mainstream news, but you can read about from this independent observer.

As the world’s attention is transfixed by every new development in Chapo Guzman’s latest audacious prison break, something much more important – and potentially more dangerous – is happening in Mexico. Yesterday the country held its first auction of offshore oil leases, bringing to an end 77 long years of state control over energy.

Billmon: The Eurosystem's (Monetary) Control of Europe's Politics

Click here to access article by Billmon from Moon of Alabama.

The central bankers waged a 50-60 year political war to wrest back the monetary flexibility that the break down of Bretton Woods gave to national governments. Having won that war across most of the developed world in the 70s and 80s, they extended the battlefield to the emerging markets in '90s and '00s.

The autonomy of central banks (meaning the political allegiance to Wall Street/London City/Frankfurt etc.) was maybe the biggest neoliberal victory of all. If rightwing political victories (Reagan, Thatcher et. al.) were the beachheads of the Great Counterattack on social democracy then "independent" central banks became the citadels of the occupation forces: Neoliberalism's "Republican Guard."

This article reveals one of the biggest secrets of capitalist control of their nations, and this was very well expressed by one of history's biggest banker:

 "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

Iran is Heading West Now

Click here to access article by Petr Lvov from New Eastern Outlook.

This Russian writer sees the Iran deal as a cave-in to the Empire, and a defeat for Iranian independence and Russia.

What does all this mean in strategic terms? To be frank, the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program is in fact an achievement of historical significance, since Iran is making a U-turn to seek rapprochement with the US and the EU. The experiment of the Islamic Revolution is over and it has failed. And the winners are the West, the sitting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his pro-Western liberal team. And one could predict this happening due to the moods of the overwhelming majority in Iranian society. The population is tired of the hardships that have been brought forward by international sanctions. Iran’s economy has been experiencing a long period of stagnation. The government can hardly fund social programs anymore and the youth, which accounts to over 50% of the population of the country, refuses to understand why it has to live according to the religious concepts of Ayatollah Khomeini instead of following the modern technological and cultural developments that are adopted across the world.

If Iranian government refused to change its ways, it would face a “color” revolution brought around by Western propaganda and the fact that Iran is a multinational state where the rights of minorities are not always respected.

Who Will Bail Out Humanity If The GMO Evangelists Win?

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from East by Northwest. 

Rather than let science and rational discussion underpin the debate and attempt to use that to convince decision makers, the GM industry relies on expensive lobbying campaigns to attack transparency, resorts to fakery, bribery, intimidation, dirty tricks and the corrupting of public sector bodies that in principle exist to uphold the public interest.

Methane Outbreak Nears

Click here to access article by Robert Hunziker from Dissident Voice.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as world governments, ignores the risks of an ice-free Arctic (Wadhams). Rather, an ice-free Arctic is widely applauded by much of the world as a positive way forward for re-opening of northern shipping routes, new trips for cruise lines, and access to a huge cache of fossil fuels.

According to Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, an ice-free Arctic with its concomitant methane outbreak potential is scarcely mentioned by the IPCC in its assessment. Evidently, the IPCC does not want to discuss the possibility of major catastrophes.

In truth, an ice-free Arctic tempestuously opens up eons of methane entrapped ever since the last Ice Age. The ramifications are profound. 

While capitalists are celebrating the opening of an ice-free Arctic so that they can accumulate more profits and power, the methane explosion that is expected there in the near future is one example of a feed-back loop that climatologists have been warning us about for decades.

TTIP: a corporate lobbying paradise

Click here to access article from Corporate Europe Observatory.

Which businesses are pushing most for the proposed EU-US trade deal TTIP? Who’s influencing EU negotiators? Corporate Europe Observatory’s eight new info-graphics reveal the corporate lobby behind the TTIP talks.

Here are some more blown-up graphics that illustrate whose interests TTIP will serve:

Another “Terror” Arrest; Another Mentally Ill Man, Armed by the FBI

Click here to access article by Dan Froomkin from The Intercept.

Here is another incident that our ruling class media have exploited to keep the theme of terrorism going and fear spreading so that we will accept all kinds of restrictions on our civil liberties and look to their agents of violence for protection. 

U.S. law enforcement officials announced another terror arrest on Monday, after arming a mentally ill man and then charging him with having guns.

ABC News quoted a “senior federal official briefed on the arrest” as saying: “This is a very bad person arrested before he could do very bad things.”

But in a sting reminiscent of so many others conducted by the FBI since 9/11, Alexander Ciccolo, 23, “aka Ali Al Amriki,” was apparently a mentally ill man who was doing nothing more than ranting about violent jihad and talking (admittedly in frightening ways) about launching attacks—until he met an FBI informant.

But, but, bin Laden died in 2001, didn't he??!

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from his blog The Cutting Edge.

In reference to his investigations entitled "The bin Laden death mythology" which he published earlier this month, he writes:

I've had a few people raise questions about my story - now the third major alternative account of the bin Laden raid - due to early reports suggesting that bin Laden had in fact died long before 2011.

My piece does address this issue indirectly, though it's buried some way deep in the piece and easy to miss given the length.

Here I'm going to make some brief comments about this issue, to clarify the relationship between my story, and the idea that bin Laden died much earlier due to ill health.
Indeed, judging by the numerous previous reports of bin Laden's death, it's fair to say that he died something like nine times, if not more.

US-Backed Violence in Latin America

Click here to listen to a recorded 55 minute interview from KPFA in Berkeley, California with two professors, Jennifer Disney and Ginger Williams, who have recently published findings of their study on right-wing dictatorships in Latin America.

I recommend this for people who are only beginning to question US foreign policies, especially young people who have been subject to years of indoctrination in schools and are beginning to question what adult authorities have been telling them about the US government.

Two American professors tell about their discovery of Pentagon support for right-wing dictatorships and paramilitary armies that engage in terrorism to suppress all civil opposition. Sound familiar? The targets of these paramilitary-terrorist armies have usually been labor activists, teachers, health workers, journalists, and indigenous people who live on resource rich areas in countries like Mexico, Honduras, and Columbia. This, of course, has been going on ever since US capitalists of European origins went on an empire building project around the turn of the 20th/21st century after completing their control over the North American continent. Under neoliberalism this practice has been accelerating in some places in Latin America where right-wing political forces still control their governments. 

The professors' findings have been published in an obscure academic journal where it will likely only gather dust in campus libraries. Such is the control of information wielded by our capitalist masters on subjects that are inimical to their interests.

Huge International Coalition Calls for a Big Change to WTO Agenda

Click here to access article by Deborah James from Our World Is Not for Sale. (Note: I am posting the article from OWINFS's website (instead of AlterNet) because the author is associated with this organization.)

In Our World Is Not for Sale network, we have been clear: after 20 years of failed policies of the WTO, it is time for a Turnaround! There needs to be an immediate cessation of all talks for further liberalization, and instead governments around the world need to start working in a completely different direction for global trade talks that put jobs, food, and sustainable development issues first.

Civil society needs to send a clear message to turn around the direction of global trade talks. Building on the global letter, work on the national level to ensure that elected officials reflect our goals and values is essential.

For some undisclosed reason the WTO must relax some of its restrictions on "liberalization", that is, trade rules for corporations in order to clear the way for the Empire's new trade/commercial rules of TISA, TTIP, and TPP. 

Notice how our ruling capitalist masters even own the language we that is used even by opponents. They have forced us to adopt their words for our enslavement to them--the owners of the economy. They call this "liberalism"--the ideology of capitalism. "Neoliberalism" is the new ideology of capitalism they devised around the turn of the 20/21st century which is seeking to eliminate any nation's ability to interfere with corporate/financial activity. You see, "liberalism" was to earlier times when nationalism was present what "neoliberalism" is now when the Empire is determined to smash national boundaries--for their capitalists, not for us workers. It's what George H. W. Bush meant when he used used the term "new world order" in a speech during his tenure as president:

Until now, the world we've known has been a world divided—a world of barbed wire and concrete block, conflict and cold war. Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order.

Of course, this term has been ridiculed for the unwashed masses as a kind of "conspiracy theory" which, as we all know, is about paranoid fantasies involving elites which get together to plan for their profits and power to our disadvantage. (sarcasm)

However as we have seen in the reality of our daily lives, "neoliberalism" means our "depowerment" which results in our impoverishment. So whenever we read about "neoliberalism", we should translate this term into our further depowerment. (Or maybe another term that would fit would be our increased "impotence".) I use the adjectives "further" and "increased" to make clear that we workers have never enjoyed significant power to determine how our economies were run, but under the hyper-capitalism of "neoliberalism", we will have no power. Think of a slave being put in shackles, or a prisoner put in solitary confinement.

Obama promotes “historic” nuclear deal with Iran

Click here to access article by Keith Jones from World Socialist Web Site. 

Yesterday’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) enshrines the sweeping concessions Iran made under the “framework” agreement reached in Lausanne, Switzerland on April 2, as well as introducing further conditions and stipulations highly advantageous to Washington.

Iran must either dismantle or roll back and freeze the key elements of its nuclear program and must submit to the most intrusive nuclear inspections regime ever devised. 

Here is another very sceptical view on this deal entitled "Iran Nuclear Deal: The Real Battle Begins" by Stephen Lendman.

And finally, I recommend this article entitled "US/Israeli/Saudi ‘Behavior’ Problems" by Robert Parry who shows whose behavior is really despicable and needs to be brought under control. 

Lessons from Greece: The pseudo-left in power

Click here to access article by Joseph Kishore from World Socialist Web Site.

Here is another worthy interpretation of the dramatic turn-about by the Syriza party in Greece when they submitted to European Union's demands. 

This means, first of all, understanding the nature of Syriza and its political co-thinkers, which the WSWS has defined as “pseudo-left.” The actions taken by Tsipras flow inexorably from the class basis of Syriza, a bourgeois party resting on more privileged layers of the upper-middle class. Syriza could not resist the demands of the European banks, because to do so would require mobilizing the working class against the national bourgeoisie within Greece itself, which functions as a fifth column of European imperialism.

The Latest Snowden Leak Is Devastating to NSA Defenders

Click here to access article by Conor Friedersdorf from The Atlantic. 

The agency collected and stored intimate chats, photos, and emails belonging to innocent Americans—and secured them so poorly that reporters can now browse them at will.

Fear takes root in Syriza

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder.

Fear of offending the more powerful and internalizing the “moral” hectoring they deliver at every opportunity. Guaranteeing bank profits is somehow more “moral” than the health and well-being of entire countries. Social Democrats have absorbed this ideology as thoroughly as conservatives.

With the Empire's neoliberal agenda and forces arrayed against them, ordinary Greeks need all the help they can get to keep from being crushed by the forces of fascism, aka the naked fist of capitalism, which are now facing them.

Socialism in one country is not possible in one small country. Socialism in a single big country would be extremely difficult, if the entire might of the capitalist world were arrayed against it.

There are no Greek solutions for Greece, there are only European or international solutions.

Nonetheless, somebody has to go first. Finding allies is indispensable for any Greek turn from the eurozone to have a chance at success.

SYRIZA in power, social movements at a crossroads

Click here to access article by Theodoros Karyotis from is blog atonomias. (Note: Theodoros Karyotis is a sociologist, translator and activist participating in social movements that promote self-management, solidarity economy and defense of the commons in Greece. Like most Greek writers, he frequently makes reference to the word "imaginary" which in English appears to be a word that is only used by sociologists. Here is an excellent definition. ) 

The dire circumstances in Greece compel the social movements to reposition themselves in front of the SYRIZA government.

This writer for Greek grass-root social movements clearly see the need for the grassroots' social movements to formulate a plan of action now that the middle class Syriza party has caved in to the neoliberal demands of European capitalists.

...at the end of February a forum of thinkers and activists of grass roots movements took place in Athens, with hundreds of participants, under the title “Prosperity without growth”, with the explicit goal of translating their activities into concrete proposals, addressed as much to the political powers, as well as to society. Starting from the premise that economic growth is already incompatible with social wellbeing and environmental sustainability, the grassroots movements seek to complement the creative resistance to neoliberal politics and the construction of viable alternatives from below with the demand for radical reforms: from the introduction of a basic universal income, to the institution of new regimes of management of the commons, to the creation of a legal framework that permits the operation of recuperated factories, like Vio.Me in Thessaloniki. ....

.... ...one of the most relevant initiatives that emerged from the forum was the effort to connect and integrate antagonistic projects in defence of the commons into a political agent capable of playing a protagonistic role in a postconsumerist society, helping thereby to overcome the artificial dilemma between austerity and growth.

Oscar and Pulitzer Award-Winning Journalist Laura Poitras Sues U.S. Government To Uncover Records After Years of Airport Detentions and Searches

Click here to access article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This report shows how government of the ruling capitalist class can punish those who expose their secrets.

Academy and Pulitzer Prize Award-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. transportation security agencies today demanding they release records documenting a six-year period in which she was searched, questioned, and often subjected to hours-long security screenings at U.S. and overseas airports on more than 50 occasions. ....

“I’m filing this lawsuit because the government uses the U.S. border to bypass the rule of law,” said Poitras. “This simply should not be tolerated in a democracy. I am also filing this suit in support of the countless other less high-profile people who have also been subjected to years of Kafkaesque harassment at the borders. We have a right to know how this system works and why we are targeted.”

I wonder if after years of futile litigation, she will still believe that the US is, or ever was, a "democracy".

Deaths mount as Pakistan heatwave is linked to climate

Click here to access article by Saleem Shaikh from Climate News Network. 

More than 1,200 people have died as the result of an intense heatwave in southern Pakistan, and experts warn of more hot weather to come.

For an update on how the heat waves are impacting nature in general, read this article from the same website. 

It's clear that we are only beginning to see the effects of climate destabilization because of the irresponsibility of humans, or more precisely, those who rule over humans: capitalists who are addicted to profits and power. 

Destroying What Remains: How the US Navy Plans to War Game the Arctic

Click here to access article by Dahr Jamail from Truthout.

This veteran independent journalist on whom we relied so much to tell us the truth about what our imperial masters were doing in Iraq now brings us news of what they have planned in Alaska and the Arctic. This time the "collateral damage" are the fishing industry, what's left of the pristine environment, and wildlife instead of Iraqis and their environment.

Once again, it is the military, industrial, financial, and imperial complex that will win as a result of the Navy's plans to prepare for war in the arctic. How do they justify this assault on the environment? Of course, it's the old standby excuse when violating our Constitutional rights and committing crimes against humanity and nature--"national security".

The bottom line on all this is simple, if brutal. The Navy is increasingly focused on possible future climate-change conflicts in the melting waters of the north and, in that context, has little or no intention of caretaking the environment when it comes to military exercises. In addition, the federal agencies tasked with overseeing any war-gaming plans have neither the legal ability nor the will to enforce environmental regulations when what's at stake, at least according to the Pentagon, is "national security."

Greece’s capitulation reveals deep conflicts within Eurozone

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution.

All of this has left little Greece at the heart of an epic battle with geostrategic and financial implications that reach far beyond the debate about austerity or the question of the country’s towering debt load. Syriza’s sudden withdrawal [capitulation] after months of brinkmanship has ended up exploding deep-seated rifts within the creditor camp, revealing a set of seemingly insurmountable contradictions within the Eurozone as a whole.

Alex Lantier of World Socialist Web Site makes the same argument, but expressed differently, in his article entitled "Tensions erupt in Europe as Berlin threatens to expel Greece from the euro".

Read this article by "Yves Smith" from Naked Capitalism for the details of this new harsh agreement imposed mostly by Germany and the unelected elites at the European Commission headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. 

Another liberal capitalist take on this issue which offers some useful perspectives on Greece's sovereign debt is a piece by Charles Hugh Smith entitled "Greece and the End of the Euroland Fantasy".  

Who’s been Blocking A Deal With Iran?

Click here to access article by Caleb Maupin from New Eastern Outlook.

The place where oil cartels, weapons manufacturers, and Israel supporters are most closely concentrated is on Wall Street. Most major US banking institutions contain all three elements. Digging even slightly into the most powerful circles of global financial power will reveal investments in oil, weapons, and Israeli-aligned entities.

Syria battles against the carving out of a Kurdish State by NATO, using ISIS

Click here to access article by Fahwad Al-Khadoumi from nsnbc international.

The author provides evidence and testimony from knowledgeable sources that the creation of a Kurdish state is part of an Empire plan using a terrorist army to destabilize and balkanize countries in the region in preparation for low intensity conflicts with China and Russia.

While the US-led alliance carried out a number of air strikes against Daesh positions, these airstrikes focus largely on supporting the Kurdish separatist YPG that is combating Daesh forces in the region around Ayn Al-Arab / Kobani.

Analysts would call this US/NATO strategy with regard to Daesh and the YPG and instrumentalized , cooperative antagonism that ultimately aims at carving out a Kurdish territory from the Syrian State.

TIME Admits ISIS Bringing Arms, Fighters in From NATO Territory

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.

Even Western media confirm the following:

...Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and host of the United States Air Force’s Incirlik Air Base, has full control of its borders meaning that ISIS-bound convoys not only pass over its borders with the apparent approval of Turkish border guards, but are assembled somewhere within Turkey itself before arriving at the edge of Syrian territory.

No effort has been made to stem the flow of supplies to ISIS from NATO territory, with the Turkish government officially denying the trucks DW videotaped and reported on even exist. This indicates clear NATO complicity in the arming and supplying of ISIS and other Al Qaeda affiliates who are in fact invading Syria from NATO-territory, as well as from US-ally Jordan.

Quarantine Greece? EU is placing terms into new loan proposal that will cut Greece off from BRICS financing

Click here to access article by "alexrpt" from Red Pill Times.

Troika creditors are embedding terms into the new loan proposal that will prohibit Greece from seeking any financial assistance from third parties…i.e. Russia and the BRICS.

LIBOR: History’s Largest Financial Crime that the WSJ and NYT Would Like You to Forget

Click here to access article by William K. Black from New Economic Perspectives. 

While investigating the Libor scandal, Black discovers a noticeable lack of reporting or a very decided spin on the reporting of the scandal in mainstream media. He reports the details of this discovery in the article. 

I read a BBC story about the LIBOR criminal trial in the UK and was going to write to criticize its woeful analytics. In preparation I checked the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to see how they reported the devastating testimony in the trial. I could not, however, find any coverage in my electronic searches and viewing their web pages.

To review the bidding, the LIBOR bid rigging cartel was the largest cartel in history, manipulating the prices of an estimated $300+ trillion in assets. That is a figure considerably larger than the world’s combined GDP.

Once again we see members of our ruling class get away scot-free with crimes while others are locked up forever or assassinated by their police forces for very minor infractions. Such is life in class-structured societies. We will never solve the major issues of wars, climate destabilization, and extreme wealth-islands (even literally) for a few amidst vast oceans of poverty for the many unless we end their rule and create radical egalitarian societies.

Refusing Capitalism

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from CounterPunch.

Capitalism is based on addiction. It encourages people to crave for more and more wealth and more and more products. Ridiculously wealthy people want even more riches, resulting in war, exploitation and the immiseration of working folk. In turn, ordinary people have been encouraged to take out ever greater debts in order to purchase an endless stream of goods of dubious worth. This addictive behaviour is ultimately ruinous for the individual, humankind and the environment, which becomes stripped bare in the process.

US-Israeli Imperialists Plot Downfall of Syria and Iran

Click here to access article by Brandon Martinez from Non-Aligned Media. 

Martinez does an excellent job of assembling the main features of the Zionist strategy of divide and rule that has been in operation probably since the founding of Israel, and using mainstream sources to document this assembly. The objective of getting Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East to literally kill each other has been the single thread running through all of the wars and upheavals in this region since Israel's appearance. This Zionist strategy has dove-tailed nicely with the US Empire's need to control the region's oil resources, and above all, the need to protect the medieval kingdom of Saudi Arabia and associates because they, in return for this protection, back the US dollar. Hence, the Israelis, too, have always cooperated with Saudi Arabia in fomenting this carnage. Have you noticed that the terrorist army called ISIS never attacks Israel? And, Israelis even helping them? (Also, see this.)

The United States has been running a particularly reckless and transparent bluff on the world.

‘We must defeat ISIS’ has been the repetitive mantra bellowed from pulpits and podiums by deceitful US officials. But this bit of shameless Orwellian newspeak is coming from the very same rogue policy makers who have been the primary source of arms and largesse to that group and its sordid affiliates across Syria, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere.

American Lemmings: The Empire's Favorite

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

I think there is still hope when a person such as Farruggio from a working class background really understands some of the glaring, fundamental realities of political life in the US.

...we have an American Empire that has, over the period of decades, transformed much of our populace into lemmings.

They achieved this with bombarding us, through the corporate-run media, with misinformation, disinformation and outright lies.

The empire played the fear card over and over: first it was fear of the Commies, then fear of the Islamic terrorists, fear of illegal aliens from south of the border to rape our wives and daughters and then take over our busboy and dishwasher careers; fear of gays corrupting our children, fear of a Marxist/Socialist government, and of course, for we white folks, the fear of the blacks taking over our neighborhoods.

Why Eric Holder’s new job is an insult to the American public

Click here to access article by David Dayen from Salon. 

The former Attorney General who made "too big to jail" a national joke now re-joins his old corporate law firm 

This is what passes for left capitalist criticism (often referred to as "liberal") in the USA. Dripping with moral outrage, such critical articles in the end serve the ruling capitalist class by implying that Holder's return to his firm, which defends and supports major banking interests, was an immoral exception to the way things really are in this country. Of course, this in essence is a denial of the revolving door phenomenon which is the way capitalists rule in the US, it's the way they have always ruled when they could get away with it; and now with the consolidation of wealth and power through private ownership of everything of value, it is completely commonplace.

Greek government approves brutal austerity measures in proposal to EU

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

This is quite an amazing turn-about for the Syriza leadership following so closely on the referendum vote! Apparently the views of James Petras and William Engdahl were correct. 

Greece’s Syriza-led government agreed to a massive new €13 billion (US$14.34 billion) package of austerity measures yesterday evening, less than a week after Sunday’s landslide “no” vote in a referendum on European Union (EU) austerity.

The proposal would be the deepest package of cuts since the EU austerity drive began in Greece in late 2009. It goes well beyond the proposed €8 to 9 billion in cuts initially demanded by the EU in talks with Syriza.

See also this and this related to the same subject.

Abrupt Climate Change and The Failure of Democracy

Click here to access article by Chrisopher Black from New Eastern Outlook. (Note: the link he cites in the article for "FirstPost website" must be in error. The correct article can be found here.)

Black is one of a few notable observers who is facing head-on the current and projected calamitous impacts of climate destabilization, and he urges us to face them with him. As laudable as this article is, I have a few problems with it that I don't think is merely nitpicking. 

He is clearly befuddled by what to do about the destabilization of the climate which is only beginning to occur because, as he argues, governments don't care--both "the capitalist world and even the socialist world that is entrapped within its systems." This confusing sentence reveals a lot related to his general confusion and depressing statements which suggest that nothing can be done about climate destabilization. His argument seems to pose only a moral appeal to people of the world to force their governments to do something constructive.

And, what is the "socialist world"? He specifically mentions only China. He adds a little later to this confusion with these statements:

...even in the socialist world, though things are done to try to limit pollution and reduce carbon in the atmosphere, as we see with China’s tree planting program, and carbon sequestration initiatives, they are still locked into a predominantly capitalist, for profit world, there still seems no urgency, and the leaders talk in terms of decades instead of months.

This begs the question can democracy really exist in nations of tens of and hundreds of millions of people? What is this democracy?

I think the source of his intellectual confusion--which not only affects him but most others who are concerned--is the ubiquitous indoctrination programs of capitalist elites. They have people thinking that all one needs to do is label a party or government with a "socialism" tag and this makes them socialist (for example, see this in reference to Vietnam). Likewise for "democracy". Capitalist ideologists have deliberately caused this confusion to interfere with their subjects ability to think straight--an ability which is vitally needed to overthrow their deadly system and replace it with a sustainable and equitable one.

New SWAT Documents Give Snapshot of Ugly Militarization of U.S. Police

Click here to access article by George Joseph from The Intercept. 

Extensive records from SWAT team raids in northeastern Massachusetts released today by the American Civil Liberties Union corroborate what police reform advocates have long insisted: that “Special Weapons And Tactics” units spend a majority of their time responding to low-risk situations that do not require SWAT’s quasi-military approach.

Even the Pope gets it: carbon markets won’t fix the climate

Click here to access article by Gareth Bryant from Progress in Political Economy.

The author provides more evidence that the carbon market scheme functions as a public relations gimmick to disguise corporate pollution, and even allows corporations to profit from it. 

Carbon markets are in fact designed to seek out cheap emissions reductions...over fundamental structural changes to energy systems away from fossil fuels and towards renewables. Researchers and activists have linked this profit-driven logic to the creative accounting, financial fraud, phantom emissions reductions and polluter subsidies that have riddled carbon markets, arguing they cannot be reformed and should be scrapped.

And he is not optimistic about the upcoming talks in Paris scheduled to begin on Nov. 30th.

As we approach the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris, carbon markets just won’t go away – even despite the fact market solutions actively hinder our ability to make serious emissions cuts.

Record Warmth Continues to Bake U.S. West

Click here to access article by Andrea Thompson from Climate Central.

The huge area of considerable warmth in the Pacific Ocean that has been hanging around for two years now is one of the main drivers for the sultry western weather, and is getting a boost from the very healthy El Niño event that looks to be in place through the end of the year.

These forces are also acting on the background warming that results from the extra heat trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere by ever-increasing greenhouse gas levels, which increases the odds for such high temperature records.

The heat spells bad news for the tenacious drought that is now in its fifth year in California, as well as newly expanded drought conditions in the Pacific Northwest, which saw a paltry winter snowpack during the balmy winter.

Will climate chaos reign in the Anthropocene?

Click here to access article by Ian Angus from Climate & Capitalism.

Naturalists had of course been aware since the mid-19th century that glaciers had at least once advanced to cover much of the world with ice, and that animals now unknown once walked the earth, but changes of that magnitude were believed to occur extremely slowly, and to be of no relevance to human history and activity. Like the painted backdrop in a stage play, the natural world was unchanging context, not an active player in any human drama.

That view is no longer tenable. Scientific research now shows that the Earth is constantly changing on every scale of space and time, and that the most drastic changes often occur with remarkable speed. 

The Flaccid “Revolution” of Sanders’ Eunuch Class

Click here if you wish to directly access the brief essay by Phil Rockstroh republished below from The Chiseler. 

How is it possible that Bernie Sanders is leading a “political revolution"… from inside the Democratic Party? Doing such is like organizing an orgy within a house of  eunuchs; a marathon in an emphysema ward; a zen tea ceremony in a meth house.

The Democratic Party is a cul-de-sac for leftist activism.

Revolutionaries do not – from the advent of the uprising – vow to endorse their despotic foes if defeated, as Sanders has promised to do when corporacrat and warmonger Hillary Clinton emerges victorious from the primary season. 

What could be the source of this toxic naivety? It seems to be the liberal equivalent of wingnut gun fetishism, police state apologia, and military hagiography i.e., a compulsion to ward off feelings of powerlessness – a desperate clinging to the illusion of control – a willfully obtuse refusal to accept the fact that reform cannot arrive by participating in a system owned and operated by one’s oppressor.

A slave is not going to change the plantation from within.

Class warfare through stock markets

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder.

The article provides a very good description of the current concentration of wealth that has been accelerating during the current neoliberal phase that characterizes capitalism into which the Empire has entered. However, Dolack overlooks one important point when he wrote in his opening paragraph about the motivation of greed:

Income re-distribution is always in the eye of the beholder, but never seen as such by those for whom more is never enough. The insatiable greed of financiers has reached the point where large corporations are now spending almost all profits on stock buybacks and dividends. And, despite that largesse, those companies are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash.

It is not so much wealth that is worshiped by our masters, it is the power that is created by the acquisition of wealth. This is the real addiction that drives them on and on to accumulate ever greater amounts of wealth beyond which they could never spend. 

Like any other hardcore addict, no moral or social considerations ever stand in their way of satisfying this addiction. Thus, wars, even global wars, never bother them--actually wars often end up producing more power/wealth for them. Extreme poverty doesn't bother them--except they regard it as visual pollution that they go to great lengths to avoid. It is precisely this insight that must drive us in the Ninety-Nine Percent to end the rule of this disastrous system and replace it with radical egalitarian societies. This is the only way we will prevent the coming catastrophes of climate destabilization and nuclear wars.

This insight is precisely why we shouldn't look to earlier forms of capitalist social development in which some mild forms of regulation were present. Capitalism is exactly like a cancer--it must grow or die. And we shouldn't look to our salvation in a "multi-polar" world where competing capitalist nations exist. Surely we have learned this from the horrendous experiences during the first half of the 20th century! While Russian and Chinese capitalists appear to be under the control of governments in their respective countries, how long can these benign relationships last? And, why should we see their social systems as something to be emulated?

GREECE’D: We Voted ‘No’ to slavery, but ‘Yes’ to our chains

Click here to access article by Greg Palast from his blog. 

I believe that Palast has some very good arguments here and a realistic assessment of what many Greeks are unable to face.

I know that many Greeks, Cypriots, Italians and Portuguese all express a visceral fear of leaving the euro. Depending on which polls one chooses to believe, anywhere from a near-majority to an overwhelming majority of Greeks wish to remain in the euro at all costs. From the hysterical statements I heard from some Greeks that, “We cannot leave Europe!”, you’d think that dropping the euro will cause Greece to break off at the Albanian border and crash into Africa.

It would be refreshing to hear political leaders say the honest economic truth: “Workers of Europe unite! You have nothing to lose but the euro—and your chains.”

The Greek Crisis - What You're Not Being Told

Click here to access 4:15m video with transcript posted on StormCloudsGathering. (I'm not sure who is behind this website, but the video was also posted without the transcript on Non-Aligned Media where Brandon Martinez was listed as the writer. (He is also the co-founder of the Non-Aligned Media. I much prefer this one with the transcript.) 

The video with transcript provides what I believe to be a very good summary for those who haven't been following the events in Greece and Europe because they are much too busy or think that foreign events don't matter to them.

Greece’s resounding OXI shakes Europe to the core

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution. 

They tried everything. They shut down the banks. They imposed capital controls. They faked the polls. They spread rumors about impending deposit seizures. They even threatened to force Greece out of the Eurozone and to pursue outright regime change. Over the past 10 days, the political, financial and media establishment — both within Greece and in Europe — went full-on apocalyptic.

But the Greeks resisted.

Roos provides his take on the repercussions we can expect from Sunday's Greek referendum.

Nudelman's New War, Nuland's Nemesis--Will Greece, or won't Greece be destroyed to save her from Russia

Click here to access article by John Helmer from his blog Dances with Bears.

Helmer surveys a number of US think tanks, where our ruling masters hash out their nefarious strategies, to find out what they are thinking in reaction to Greece's resounding "no" to paying off illegitimate debts and more austerity policies to pay for the debts. In addition he finds other negative evidence to suggest that the West may be planning a coup in Greece. It seems that our masters don't like democracy when it goes against their interests. 

...when the State Department’s Victoria Nuland (nee Nudelman...) visited Athens to issue an ultimatum against breaking the anti-Russian sanctions regime, and the Anglo-American think-tanks followed with warnings the Russian Navy is about to sail into Piraeus, the object of the game has been clear. The line for Operation Nemesis has been that Greece must be saved, not from itself or from its creditors, but from the enemy in Moscow. The Russian line has been to do nothing to give credence to that propaganda; to wait and to watch.

As the head of State’s Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs, Nuland is the official in charge of warmaking in Europe. 

ISIL: Made in Langley

Click here to access article by Wayne Madsen from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

The evidence keeps mounting that ISIS OR ISIL is a collaborative project of the US, Saudis and associates, and Israel as a integral part of the Empire's strategy of tension to keep the Middle East destabilized and under control. The Empire's frequent use of this strategy from contrived terrorist incidents in the US to destabilizing countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine, testifies to its usefulness in a variety of situations.

ISIL now serves as an important CIA, Saudi, and Israeli asset against common foes like Iran. ISIL has made no secret of its desire to bring the death and destruction it has visited upon Syria and Iraq into the heart of Iran. The destabilization of Iran by sponsoring terrorist attacks in Iran and against Iranian targets abroad has long been the modus operandi of the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia....

Eric Holder Returns as Hero to Law Firm That Lobbies for Big Banks

Click here to access article by Lee Fang from The Intercept.

After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients.

This article reports on a phenomenon that is now business as usual in the US and in Western style "democracies" in general. As such it once again illustrates that government does not represent the general public, but only the ruling capitalist class--people who claim private "ownership" of a society's economy. 

At the beginning they seduced working people into aiding them in the overthrow the rule of monarchies and aristocracies by promising freedom from arbitrary rule and democracy. They have had to pay lip service to these promises ever since. However, over the past several centuries of rule by this class they have been slowly increasing their accumulation of ownership, wealth, and power. Now we see the results: they have also been increasing the integration of government with their rule so that government decision making bodies are now performing a purely fake democratic drama for the public while simultaneously serving the very real capitalist interests of profit and power.

How the Empire will strike back

Click here to access article by "The Saker" from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

Okay, now that we have all celebrated the beautiful Greek “NO!” to the EU plutocracy, we need to get real again and look at the Empire’s options.  Or, in fact, at the Empire’s option (with no ‘s’ at the end).

The Empire is extremely predictable.  The example of Greece is a textbook case of how the Empire uses banks to strangle a country with debt, creates a comprador ruling class, turns the national media into an instrument of imperial propaganda and tries to completely halt any democratic process by dealing only with the ruling class.  By some quasi miracle this last phase has failed in the case of Greece.

The author then proceeds to explain to us how Empire masters will attempt to punish Greeks for this insubordination. 

Also, see this by economist Michael Hudson entitled "Why No Means Yes" from his blog.

TPP: Fast Track to Oligarchy

Click here if you wish to access this cartoon directly from cartoonist Jen Sorensen's website.

 




































Of course, there was no "old Obama". The "President of the United States" was long ago (beginning with the assassination of J.F. Kennedy) converted by our hidden ruling class into a propaganda (aka public relations) office to serve the ruling class. Obama knew this when he was selected for this position, and he is faithfully carrying out his responsibilities as instructed by his ruling class bosses.

Obama was mostly raised by his banker grandmother in Hawaii, and he adopted her values. His indoctrination was further reinforced by his education in elite private schools in Hawaii, then Columbia and Harvard. He has had little difficulty in accepting and carrying out his assignment. By carefully cultivating this man who has an outward racial appearance of an African-American to race-conscious Americans, our masters have tricked Americans once again into believing that anything would change by an election.

Jane Fonda on climate change

Click here to access her 12:01m interview on CBC-TV, Canada's public communications company.

I'm posting this not so much for her insights on the threat of climate destabilization, but mostly because she is a very familiar activist from my generation to demonstrate that there are still such activists who are continuing the fight against the capitalist ruling class "evil-doers". We fought them in the Civil Rights Movement, we fought them in the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, and we will still keep fighting them on the issue of climate destabilization and their war policies until our last breath.

Here below is Fonda speaking as a younger activist in 1970 expressing her political views also on CBC-TV regarding issues of that time. (I had to crank my sound system way up to hear everything.) She makes clear that capitalism was the main problem then, and capitalism is still the main problem today under-girding all major problems. Younger generations must take up this fight against such a system that will sacrifice humans, many species, and much of the life-supporting environment on the alter of profit and class power. European youth are waking up. Unfortunately, many young Americans are still enthralled with all their electronic gadgets.

Greece needs a Plan C: for the commons and communality

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution. 

Roos argues that in this showdown with European and international capital, the Greeks are embarking on a revolutionary path without a revolutionary plan, "Plan C". 

...the debate within Syriza on how to resolve the crisis has essentially revolved around two poles: the government’s original plan A — to end austerity within the eurozone — and the more radical alternative originally proposed by the party’s left faction, whose Plan B envisions a unilateral default and Grexit as a way out of the misery. We also know that the latter plan has gained more and more support from Syriza cadres (even those close to Tsipras) as the negotiations with creditors stalled.

The two plans always appeared to be diametrically opposed to one another. In truth, the strong dichotomy between them obscures a shared premise. Ultimately, both Plan A and Plan B revolve around the belief that, if only the government can succeed in executing its chosen top-down program, recovery will be swift and things will quickly go back to the way they were before. 

I think he's right. If they reject plan A, plan B will be found by Greeks to be so unpalatable that they could easily opt for a serious revolutionary path. And, I think that is precisely why we are seeing the IMF, a major sector of Empire capitalist power, exhibiting signs of fright over this prospect by explicitly advocating some debt relief. Whether the Greeks have the determination and the political consciousness to pull off a revolutionary response is a major question. 

Roos provides a sketch of what a revolutionary response, plan C, would look like.

In contrast to both Plan A and Plan B, Plan C would be a bottom-up project organized by local communities that would situate itself directly on the terrain of everyday life. Its main contributions would be threefold.

However, I think that this is a question that will be increasingly confronting all people who, under the heel of the Empire's capitalist oppression, must face sooner or later. In that sense, I think it's appropriate to say that "we are all Greeks now". It's only a matter of time before we, too, will have to face the same decisions that Greeks are now facing. Shall we submit to indefinite debt peonage to capitalist elites or will we build an egalitarian society in which power comes from the people to serve the people, not just one class of people who claim to "own" the economy? 

The Greeks are facing a real test of human nature: whether to exist as free, self-determining human beings or continue to submit to being slaves to capitalists. The outcome of this major question will not be finally settled in this referendum. We can expect many more such tests of people's human nature in the future.

On eve of referendum, Greeks refuse to give in to fear

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution.

On the eve of the Greek referendum, Roos provides evidence that European corporate media are doing their best to frighten Greeks into submission to financial elites.

Jeff J. Brown interviewed on Wall St. for Main St., 2015.6.27

Click here to access a 48 minute podcast interview posted on 44Days conducted by Wall Street for Main Street with Jeff J. Brown who is currently living and working in China. (I found the audio production much more even on the SoundCloud link than Windows Media Audio which is presented in the article. With the latter I had to keep turning up the sound when Brown was speaking, and down when the interviewer was speaking.) 

I am posting this interview not because it sheds light on capitalism in general, but because it provides via Jeff Brown what I regard as authentic information about China which is difficult for Americans to access. China is becoming a major player in the world's economic and political scenes, and we simply must know what is going on there. 

NSA-French Flap Confirms Euro-Servility

Click here to access article by Ulson Gunnar from New Eastern Outlook.

The article supports my long held contention that Europe is only a section of the US-led capitalist Empire.

For those who labor under the misguided delusion that Europe defines its own destiny independently, no clearer wake up call could have been given than the latest US-French spying scandal. It is a wake up call not because of revelations that the United States has been spying on the French government, but because the French government, like its neighbor Germany who was also a victim of US spying, has predictably let the matter drop with no apparent repercussions for the perpetrators.