Film Series Sheds Light On Neoconservatives Old And New

Click here to access article by Dan Wright from Shadowproof. (updated with cartoon on 1/22/2016)

Wright reports and promotes a series of three films by Robbie Martin called "A Very Heavy Agenda" which focuses on the relatively recent rise of "neoconservatives" and their agenda of world empire. The second of the three has now been released, and the third is expected next month. Although Wright provides an excellent description of the three parts and includes trailers, I have a problem with his and the filmmaker's perspective on the phenomenon of neoconservatism. 

Both suffer from a short time historical time frame which lends support to a perspective advanced, in my opinion, by people primarily of a middle class background whose knowledge of history has been truncated by the US ruling class's educational system. This view has been popularized by such people as Naomi Klein especially in her recent book This Changes Everything which focuses only on the recent period dating from the Reagan administration (1981) to the present in which neoconservatives and their ideology have taken over control of the US from the previous nationally oriented capitalists. 

This new faction has a decidedly global agenda to which the internal US interests are sacrificed to their obsession with power and wealth. This has very adversely affected the US middle class who benefited from their privileged position while the US capitalist ruling class had a much more nationalist perspective even though they engaged in imperialist adventures. This change was by no means a coup which seems to be suggested by many bloggers and writers in addition to Klein like Paul Craig Roberts, Kevin Barrett, and others. The neocon phenomenon was only a natural evolution of a capitalist state from a nation-based imperialist orientation to a global aspiring empire due to the coalescence of interests among US allied global capitalists and their unparalleled accumulation of wealth and power. The first such capitalist evolution in modern times was the Nazi-led Axis empire. 

Having crushed this empire, a global agenda was first pursued by a new secret postwar US agency, the CIA, through the Anglo-American-European complex of nations. After assassinating (with organized crime's help) the Kennedy brothers and others that stood in their way, the CIA and their political expression, the neocons, first infiltrated the Reagan administration followed by the full development of neocon power and their agenda under George Bush #2. 9/11 was their first project which paved the way for all their invasions abroad and the curtailment of civil rights within the US. Now leaders of both capitalist parties talk openly about the US as an "exceptional nation" and its people as "indispensable". As Roberts explained:

If a country is “the exceptional country,” it means that all other countries are unexceptional. If a people are “indispensable,” it means other peoples are dispensable. We have seen this attitude at work in Washington’s 14 years of wars of aggression in the Middle East. These wars have left countries destroyed and millions of people dead, maimed, and displaced. Yet Washington continues to speak of its commitment to protect smaller countries from the aggression of larger countries. The explanation for this hypocrisy is that Washington does not regard Washington’s aggression as aggression, but as History’s purpose.

Because the US middle class (in addition to the working class) has been harmed by the rise of the neocons in the ruling class (as well as advances in worker-created technology that is "owned" by capitalists), only now are middle-class writers and bloggers complaining. Only now after the neoconservative capitalists have taken over and have implemented their neoliberal policies which have adversely impacted the US middle class are we seeing these people come out of the social justice woodwork and complain. The working class have always felt the heel of capitalist exploitation and oppression bearing down on their faces.

‘Corporate Courts’ Have Taken from the Poor and Handed to the Rich – TTIP Will Turbo-Charge This Redistribution

Click here to access article by Nick Dearden from Common Dreams. 

By examining cases where agreements have been referred arbitration courts under the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) method, the York University (Toronto, Canada) study found a strong relationship between the size of a company and the judgements.

Our main findings are that the beneficiaries of ISDS-ordered financial transfers, in the aggregate, have overwhelmingly been companies with more than USD1 billion in annual revenue – especially extra-large companies with more than USD10 billion – and individuals who have over USD100 million in net wealth. ISDS has produced monetary benefits primarily for those companies or individuals at the expense of respondent states.

Such agreements have apparently already been made by governments on a bi-lateral or small multi-lateral basis to protect investors from so-called "arbitrary" laws passed in the future by the participating foreign governments. I write "apparently" because Dearden does not make this clear. What is needed is much more explanation of how such courts have already been set up, who appointed the judges, and associated issues such as "forum-shopping" cited in the study so that ordinary educated people can understand this issue. 

For example, from Wikipedia (under "Foreign investment protection/Modern practice) I learned that under this ISDS arrangement that governments cannot win any money if they win the case--they can only lose money if they lose the case in these unique arbitration courts.

...only foreign investors can sue states under investment treaties, because states are the parties to the treaty, and only states can be held liable to pay damages for breach of the treaty. States have no corresponding right to bring an original claim against a foreign investor under such treaties, again because investors are not parties to the treaty and therefore cannot be in breach of it. Thus, a decision in favour of the State means that the state has not been ordered to pay compensation, not that it has received any compensation from the investor, although costs can be awarded against the investor. A state cannot "win" in ISDS in the manner of a foreign investor - a state which wishes to sue a foreign investor does so through its own domestic courts, without the need for a treaty. [my emphasis]

What is clear to me is that such treaties have been designed to protect capitalists from governments who want to enact laws and regulations on behalf of the public interest. ISDS is simply designed to prevent governments infringing on the rights of capitalists to reap profits from operations that may be damaging to the environment, exploiting workers, and otherwise not in a nation's interest. It is obvious that this arrangement has been created by capitalist controlled "democratic" governments for the interests of capitalists. Like all the other features of these fake democratic states, capitalist interests always take priority. Also what is clear from this Canadian study is that the richer an investor or corporation is, the more money he can make through these "arbitration" courts. But that's the way capitalism always works.

Inequality and the World Economic Forum

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

The world’s rulers are getting together at their biggest bash of the year, the World Economic Forum. Prime ministers and other high government officials will also be in attendance.

The theme for this year’s Forum, which began on January 20 at its usual home in Davos, Switzerland, is said to be “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

He continues on in the essay to explain what this theme might mean for them and for us.

U.S. Government Has Long Used Propaganda Against the American People

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog.

A companion piece from the same blog offers an excellent introduction to this history of media manipulation.

Americans’ trust of the media is at an all-time low.

But most Americans still don’t understand that the U.S. mass media is untrustworthy because  it’s completely manipulated to promote propaganda. [my emphasis]

The author provides an excellent history with many factual references, many of which I have posted before, to prove the truth of the above statement.

Government Sachs Gets Golden Wrist Slap For Global Financial Crisis

Click here to access article by James Corbett from The Corbett Report.

Corbett explains the injustice meted out to big banks that wreak our economy (and our lives) when placing their bets at the Wall Street casino. Unlike justice for banksters in Iceland, you will never see a bankster go to jail in America.

...Goldman makes tens of billions by selling the very toxic assets they were secretly betting against and in the end they pay a $5 billion penalty.

…Oh, and (needless to say) the Injustice Department practically fell over themselves to announce at the earliest possible opportunity that no one would even be prosecuted for this fraud (let alone go to jail).

…Oh, and poor Goldman will make a slightly smaller profit this year as a result of this golden wrist slap, equivalent to one measly fiscal quarter of profit for the banking behemoth.

Austerity for the people American style

Click here if you wish to access this cartoon by Brian McFadden from the NY Times or here to access it and others from his website. Also read this justified rant from American NewsX.

Meanwhile the corporate dominated government has no problem funding military bases in over a hundred countries, and bombing and invasions in places like Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It's clear that our masters are sacrificing our health and well-being in order to prioritize the corporate interests of profit and power throughout the world. 

No longer is it "guns and butter" as we experienced under Lyndon Johnson administration (guns to kill Vietnamese and butter for us)--our nation is now too poor to afford both. And, it's only going to get worse as we go deeper in debt...if we continue to maintain a state of passivity while watching their dumbing-down TV and entertainment.

Central banks as an integral part of the banking community

Click here to access article by Norbert Häring from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

Although the article is not well-written in English (likely because the author is a German economist), it offers some very candid insights about central banks that one rarely finds in media of all types. It's good to read such insights also because our most important ruling capitalist class directors are always located in such critically important institutions. 

Notice how our masters obscure the private nature of these banking institutions, which control a nation's money supply and thus control how the money is spent, with names like Federal Reserve, Bank of England, European Central Bank (ECB), etc. Thus the title should read "Central banks as an integral part of a nation's governing structure". 

The ECB and other central banks do not only talk about the control of financial institutions over governments, they enforce it vigorously. They have even brainwashed the German constitutional court, which held that it would be unconstitutional, if governments would be relieved from the pressure of financial markets.

The ECB is not even hiding its very warm and protective feelings for commercial banks. It wears them as a badge of honor, saying that everything which is good for banks is good for the economy and thus for all the people.

The economy and governments, thanks to a system controlled by the ECB, are so dependent of healthy banks, that this is true.

EXCLUSIVE: Navy Uses US Citizens as Pawns in Domestic War Games [in Washington state]

Click here to access article by Dahr Jamail from TruthOut.

In the new scenario, which the military calls "realistic military training," Navy SEALs carrying "simulated" weapons may also travel across public and private property within city limits, and may swim through public and private marinas occupied by people living on boats. They could conduct war game patrols on roads through residential communities. In addition to tribal, state, federal and county lands, there are many properties on the Navy's list of training sites marked as private.

You may also be interested in a more recent recorded 35 minute interview with Jamail (with transcript) mostly regarding this report at this post from Shadowproof.

Davos and Its Threat to Democracy

Click here to access article by Nick Buxton from Common Dreams.

While headline for this article makes the ridiculous implication that what we have had is some meaningful democracy, Buxton's essay does make clear that our capitalist masters are prepared to move away from any pretense of democracy. This is actually good unless their media manage to convince most of their subject populations that this is a move to more "democracy". It's good because more astute and awake members of the public will no longer be fooled by the present democratic fakery of managed elections, but it's bad if most of the public swallows more of their lies. The main problem is that capitalist rule intentionally creates a passive, misinformed population over time.

Buxton shows how undemocratic the board of Global Redesign Initiative which is the body that is spearheading this drive with the support of Davos members:

While half of the Board (12) are currently corporate executives, if you look at their career history, this rises to two-thirds. Only one member can be said to represent civil society (Peter Maurer of Red Cross). There are no representatives of trade unions, public sector organizations, human rights groups, peasant or indigenous organizations, students and youth.

It is therefore no surprise when multi-stakeholder policy groups rarely, if ever, recommend any binding regulations that would damage corporate profits.

Regarding the one Red Cross representative based on my personal experience with the Red Cross, this organization is thoroughly infiltrated at the highest levels by corporate representatives.

Turkey: Bombing Its Way to a Better Narrative

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

Notice how the Empire's allies in the Middle East are learning the techniques of the "big lie" that the West has perfected in its propaganda mostly to fool their own citizens. In this piece Cartalucci cites factual reports of Turkish direct support of "opposition" and terrorist armies back in 2012. I, too, posted reports of this support on my website (see this and this) as early as 2012. Hopefully Turkish citizens are not as gullible as are their counterparts in Europe and the US. Although we can't yet know for certain who was responsible for this latest terrorist incident in Istanbul, but we do have good reasons to be suspicious.

Travails of a Bankrupt Hegemon

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

Engdahl first provides an accurate early history of the would-be hegemon, the US Empire, after the conclusion of WWII, and follows this with factual information about the dramatic contrast of today's debt-burdened US. 

Now, its domestic economy a hollowed-out shell, its transportation infrastructure in horrendous decline, its skilled labor force increasingly non-existent, its university engineering and science students mostly from abroad–mainly China and India–the United States of America is in the throes of a terminal decline, a decline caused by no one but her own people who tolerated the looting and destruction of a once-beautiful nation by a greedy, power-addicted cabal of bad people with names like Rockefeller, Gates, Russell, DuPont, Buffett and others whose names are hardly known to the broad public.

The crisis that the USA faces today as World Hegemon is the fact the nation has become bankrupt, morally, spiritually, intellectually and economically, in an eerie manner much as the British Empire after onset of their Great Depression of 1873.

A few basic indicators says volumes about the rapidly-growing limits to America’s global power projection and why Washington’s “bully” tactics are being increasingly scorned by the rest of the world.

He then supplies us with a most depressing indicators of current US weakness. This is the end result of the sociopaths of US capitalist leadership which adopted the methods and operations of the earlier sociopaths known as organized criminal gangs ("mafias") to loot everything in site. (Read The Money and the Power by Denton and Morris, Double Cross by the Giancana brothers, and Gangster Capitalism by Woodiwiss--in that order.) I think that this tendency to work with criminal gangs and the use of their methods is endemic to capitalism because the system eventually and inevitably seduces ruling classes with its drugs of wealth accumulation and power to commit all sorts of crimes against humanity. Capitalism is a perfect system for sociopaths--both capitalist and criminal types.

Although he see the current weak condition of the US Empire as "a blessing in disguise", I think just the opposite. I think that this armed-to-the-teeth Empire because of its precarious position in the world is likely more dangerous than ever. 

Climate Change: A Radical Primer

Click here to access a book review of Capitalism & Climate Change authored by ecosocialist David Klein and reviewed by Michael Gasser from Solidarity.

[David] Klein and McMillan define capitalism as follows:

“Capitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately owned. The owners, or capitalists, appropriate the surplus product created by the workers. This appropriation leads to the accumulation of more capital, the amassing of wealth, further investment, and thus the expansion of capitalism. Commodities are produced for the purpose of generating profit and promoting accumulation. Within the capitalist system, individuals pursue their self interests against competition and impersonal forces of the market.”

Some of the more useful sections of this part of the book look at consequences of capitalism that are conspicuously missing from Naomi Klein’s book, in particular the military industrial complex and population growth. [David] Klein explains how imperialist wars are an inevitable consequence of capitalism and a major source of massive greenhouse gas emissions in addition to their more obvious destructive consequences for the countries that are invaded.

Ultra-Rich 'Philanthrocapitalist' Class Undermining Global Democracy: Report

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

Lazare reviews a recent study by Global Policy Forum which concludes that the increasing influence of the rich via charitable organizations is having a huge impact on government policies at all levels. 

It is widely known that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, but it is less well known that the rich have always used their money-power to get rich with the result that they have always had a disproportionate effect on public governing bodies. It's almost obscure knowledge that their system of capitalism with its enshrinement of private ownership of economic enterprise has accelerated the wealth of a few at the expense of the many. This is the reason behind what we see today all around us: a most dramatic phenomenon of extreme inequality and so many problems associated with that reality: wars, rampant crime, huge number of refugees fleeing from war ravaged areas, poverty, huge prison populations, ignorance, etc.

Some have speculated on the motives of the rich and their use of charitable foundations. They range all the way from guilt expiation, to trying to "do good", to tax write-offs, to imposing their capitalist values and methods on the rest of us, or some combination of these motives. What is so clear from the study is that this trend is undermining any pretenses about democratic governing processes. But then, it was never a reality anyhow. So I think this trend could be good if it awakens enough people to change the anti-social, anti-nature system of capitalism into an economic system that can sustain humans with a reasonable amount of dignity and equality and a natural environment that can sustain human life. 

Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East – Book Review

Click here to access this review by Rod Such of a book authored by Irene Gendzier posted on The Palestine Chronicle.

In her new book Gendzier has uncovered many unknown facts about US support of Israel following its establishment. For example:

...once the Truman administration determined that Israel would become a strategic U.S. ally, Gendzier notes that it adopted a policy to defer to Israel in matters related to the Palestinians. As early as July 1, 1948, Philip Jessup, the U.S. special delegate to the UN, had argued the case for withholding U.S. pressure on Israel due to its strategic importance and its “strong military position” which was “more than a match for most of Arab states put together.” ...he also stated: “‘From the strategic viewpoint we assume that Palestine, together with the neighboring countries is a major factor presumably in any future major conflict this region would be of vital importance to US as a potential base area and with respect to our lines of communication. Presumably also the oil resources of the area are considered vital.’” As a result Jessup argued for not pressuring Israel regarding the return of refugees.

This realignment came about even though U.S. officials were increasingly aware of Zionist aims in Palestine.

Colonialism Never Died: Puerto Rico's Economic Crisis Made in the USA

Click here to access article by Danny Haiphong from Global Independent Analytics.

Following a brief history of the island and its resistance to US colonialism, Haiphong examines the impoverishment of the island as result of privatization and other capitalist policies.

...colonialism was never truly eradicated from the global picture. African revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah fathered the theory of neo-colonialism to explain this phenomenon. Nkrumah described neo-colonialism as a form of indirect, but no less exploitative, form of colonial domination where a native ruling class administers the plunder of a country on behalf of the former colonizer. One country, Puerto Rico, has remained a colony of the US imperial state.

Today, the people of Puerto Rico are facing a devastating economic crisis made in the USA. To understand the crisis in Puerto Rico, we must look into its root causes.

2015 second warmest year on record for U.S.

Click here to access article that follows this graphic from NASA.

Why would anyone celebrate the "joy" of war?

Click here to access article by Jim Hightower from his blog. (satire)

Well, maybe "defense" contractors. They seem to be whooping it up and partying like there is no tomorrow. But then military spending creates jobs, doesn't it?!  So, I guess it's okay. (sarcasm)

It seems that Canadian arms dealers are happy too. You might want to follow up this bit of satire with a piece entitled "Canada Condemns Saudi Executions, But Arms Sales Speak Louder Than Words".

Capital accumulation

My attention was originally drawn to this graphic illustration of capitalist exploitation of labor via economist David Ruccio's website which used it as a platform to discuss how wrong John Maynard Keynes was with regard to increasing wealth and leisure for working working people. 

Keynes back in the 1930s tried to reform the capitalist system through re-distributive government policies. Little did he realize that capitalists would have nothing to do with such policies--they wanted it all for themselves--and they proceeded as always to shape the government to serve their needs. Thus the government became entirely as we see today: their government.

But enough of Ruccio who as a professor must not annoy his capitalist masters too much or else join the line at the unemployment office. I want to direct your attention to this political cartoon and its real source at the Capital Drawing Group in London. This group of four cartoonists have drawn numerous cartoons to illustrate various themes about capitalism based on Marx's writings. 

The cartoon below illustrates "The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation" as a monster of devouring workers for the wealth benefit of the capitalist pocket shown at the top.

Anthropocene Working Group: Yes, a new epoch has begun

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

Repeatedly, over hundreds of thousands of years, glaciers expanded south and north from the polar regions, covering much of the Earth with ice sheets several kilometres deep. Twelve thousand years ago, the Earth warmed and the ice retreated — the relatively warm and stable time since then is known to geologists as the Holocene epoch. It’s the time when agriculture was invented and all great human civilizations were formed. Holocene conditions, as Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Center likes to say, are the only ones in which we know for sure that humans can survive and prosper.

Is the Holocene now over? Has human activity changed the Earth System so much that a new epoch has begun? Are we now in the Anthropocene?

Are US academics who cite WikiLeaks blackballed?

Click here to access article by Chris Spannos from Crikey (Australia). 

Although the author doesn't offer any final answer to the question posed in the headline, but he provides numerous pieces of evidence that indicate the affirmative. 

My own position based partly on my experience at a university and the reading of the experience of others (sources like Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt) clearly and emphatically answers this and a more general question in the affirmative: does US academia act to discourage anti-capitalist ideas or anti-Empire material? This is one part of my theory that the ruling capitalist class has infiltrated their ideologists in every sector of society: mainstream media, entertainment, education, and most of all in the political institutions of the nation.

Jakarta Blasts: ISIS Inc Strikes Again

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from Land Destroyer.

Cartalucci advances a theory to explain why all the terrorist events are happening in so many areas of the world. I think it makes much more sense than the propaganda put forward by Empire media.

Thoughts on Rojava: an interview with Janet Biehl

Click here to access this interview (posted on Reflections on a Revolution) conducted by Zanyar Omrani, who is an Iranian Kurd and an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker, with American Janet Biehl who was Murray Bookchin’s companion and collaborator for his last 19 years.

The interviewer, Omrani, asked various questions that were designed to get Biehl's opinion as to how much conformity there was in the actual decision-making operations as practiced by the people in Rojava with the ideology of Bookchin's bottom-up political ideology.

Specifically to Bookchin, the institutions of democratic self-government that they described corresponded to much of what he had envisioned (under the name libertarian municipalism). At the base of democratic confederalism is the citizens’ assembly (in Bookchin) or commune (in Rojava). The commune sends delegates to the confederal council at the neighborhood level, and the neighborhood council sends delegates to the district, and the district to the canton. In this multi-tiered structure, as Bookchin described it, power is to flow from the bottom up.

Has the vision become real?

Although Biehl's observations were interesting, I finished reading the interview without any conclusive answers. And I think one should not expect any conclusive answers at this point in time.

One part of the interview compared the historical experience of the Russians during their revolution and their subsequent war with the West which supported factions that were inclined to capitalism (the White armies). 

People in Rojava seemed very aware of the danger that a bottom-up system can turn into a top-down system. That’s what happened, after all, in Russia. In 1917, the multi-tiered system of soviets, or councils, all over Russia, was originally supposed to carry power from the base to the summit. But once the Bolsheviks came to power, they were able to use those very institutions as conduits for top-down power, indeed for totalitarian domination. 

Essentially this question dealt with the question whether such a bottom-up political apparatus could survive particularly in a wartime situation. The specific Russian experience and the latter general question has always intrigued me. My studies of various writings particularly by Trotsky, who commanded the Red Army, and Isaac Deutscher, who studied and wrote about the revolution extensively, caused me to reach a tentative conclusion about what went wrong with the Russian Revolution. 

Trotsky and others both in the Bolshevik party and outside did not question the authoritarian structure of a military command once the war began in earnest. Thus they readily adopted it. After the Bolsheviks won the war, they relied on this structure to defend the revolution from all the problems they faced after victory: widespread famine, poor crops, epidemics, destroyed infrastructure, etc. Then it was only a matter of time when the top-down command structure completely replaced any independent power of the Soviets. People such as Stalin, who were particularly susceptible to the addictive power of control and domination (like people predisposed to alcoholism are particularly susceptible to alcohol), took over the command structures of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union.

This always led me to the following questions. Could the Russian Revolution have succeeded if they had adopted a bottom-up command structure to prosecute the war against the White and Western capitalist armies? Given that wartime conditions often see people supporting a tight and efficient command structure, how can a people suddenly dismantle a military command structure and foster a bottom-up political structure after the war is won?

Of course the Communist party leaders always explained the success of the revolution depended upon the revolution immediately spreading to other advanced capitalist countries, especially to Germany, and when this did not happen, deterioration of communist practice was inevitable. 

CIA: Undermining and Nazifying Ukraine Since 1953

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

Madsen has gleaned through some recently released CIA documents (heavily redacted, of course) to discover that various operations under their control have been going on since at least 1953. This corresponds with other information that has been uncovered regarding the efforts of the nascent Empire using both soft weapons of propaganda as is described in this article and more terrorist type organizations such as Gladio (example, Operation Gladio--see this and this) which was used to rig elections, infiltrate, and crush leftist organizations and unions all over Europe and nearby areas. 

Although he does not furnish any references for his analysis, I have long held this independent journalist as one of the best. No one is infallible and above criticism, but I consider Madsen as one of the most reliable and qualified sources of information and analysis regarding government secrecy. I've only found very minor errors such as his claim that Asst. Sec. Victoria Nuland spoke to Congress about the $5 billion dollar support of subversive efforts in Ukraine. I've been able to find that she only made this claim to the National Press Club (7:42m).

Climate Holism vs. Climate Reductionism

Click here to access article by Richard Heinberg from Post Carbon Institute.

Heinberg apparently thinks that our capitalist masters are stupid rather than desperate in their actions to support their addiction to power and wealth with which their system supplies them so abundantly. According to him, our masters are guilty of reductionist thinking.

The reductionist mindset is relentless: if one technofix leads to a problem, surely there will be a technofix for that too. Some habitual practitioners of reductionism do realize that their proposed tactics merely buy time before the next crisis hits, but they see no realistic alternative. Still, each new increment of time seems more expensive than the previous one.

Actually he doesn't see capitalist masters at all. He separates the economic system ("Wall Street") from government and labor. Apparently "holistic" thinking doesn't apply to capitalism. (sarcasm)

The lure of the technofix is that we won’t have to fundamentally change our behavior. We can go on extracting resources, using energy, and making money, all at an ever-accelerating pace. Wall Street is happy, government is happy, workers are happy. Here’s the thing: this line of action cannot solve the cascading complex of crises that will hammer civilization to bits during the remainder of this century. Until we start thinking holistically and alter our systemic behavior, we are locked into a trajectory that leads inevitably to a chain of mutually reinforcing planetary breakdowns that start with droughts and superstorms and won’t end until everything we hold dear is either destroyed or rendered meaningless.

Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman has Western leaders very worried

Click here to access article from News Corp in Australia.

If Rupert Murdoch's staff at their lead online news site in Australia says that the West (aka "The Empire") is worried, then I think its safe to assume that it's quite true.

HE’S just 30 years old and could soon be one of the most powerful people in the Arab world — and that’s probably not a good thing.

The new, 80-year-old king of Saudi Arabia, who suffers from dementia, has been criticised since taking the throne last January for his bloodthirsty style as ruler. But it’s his favourite son who has the Western world really worried.

Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is considered the likely successor of his ageing father.

He is currently the gulf kingdom’s defence minister and has been privately criticised for his dangerous geopolitical gambles in the region as Saudi Arabia plays out proxy wars in both Syria and Yemen.

While the US Empire directorate may be "worried" about the new Saudi leadership that they have been publicly supporting, the French geopolitical analyst, Thierry Meyssan, has an interesting conspiracy theory about how they may have hidden motives behind their support in an article entitled "Towards the collapse of Saudi Arabia". 

Another article about the current political situation in Saudi Arabia from what appears to be a solid independent source is this piece entitled "Paul Aarts and Carolien Roelants, Saudi Arabia: A Kingdom in Peril". It is an interview with the authors about their new book. 

US Role as State Sponsor of Terrorism Implied in US Congressional Research Service Report on Syria Conflict

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from What's Left.

Written in October 2015, the report was prepared by the Congressional Research Service, an arm of the United States Library of Congress. The Congressional Research Service provides policy and legal analysis to committees and members of the US House and Senate.

Titled “Armed Conflict in Syria: Overview and US Response,” the report reveals....

Russia Breaking Wall St Oil Price Monopoly

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

The sale of oil denominated in dollars is essential for the support of the US dollar. In turn, maintaining demand for dollars by world central banks for their currency reserves to back foreign trade of countries like China, Japan or Germany, is essential if the United States dollar is to remain the leading world reserve currency. That status as world’s leading reserve currency is one of two pillars of American hegemony since the end of World War II. The second pillar is world military supremacy.

Because all other nations need to acquire dollars to buy imports of oil and most other commodities, a country such as Russia or China typically invests the trade surplus dollars its companies earn in the form of US government bonds or similar US government securities. The only other candidate large enough, the Euro, since the 2010 Greek crisis, is seen as more risky.

That leading reserve role of the US dollar, since August 1971 when the dollar broke from gold-backing, has essentially allowed the US Government to run seemingly endless budget deficits without having to worry about rising interest rates, like having a permanent overdraft credit at your bank.

However Engdahl finishes his essay by suggesting that this will be good for world peace!

Step-by-step, Russia, China and other emerging economies are taking measures to lessen their dependency on the US dollar, to “de-dollarize.” Oil is the world’s largest traded commodity and it is almost entirely priced in dollars. Were that to end, the ability of the US military industrial complex to wage wars without end would be in deep trouble.

Perhaps that would open some doors to more peaceful ideas such as spending US taxpayer dollars on rebuilding the horrendous deterioration of basic USA economic infrastructure.

I have long argued that wealth and, especially under capitalism, its associated drug of power has taken hold of the Empire's ruling class in the form of an addiction. I really mean this literally, not rhetorically!

So, you know what often results when an opium addict or alcoholic can no longer afford their drugs? Often this results in more violence and criminal activities perpetrated by the addicts to secure money to buy their drugs. This has been the history of capitalist nations for several hundred years during colonialism and nowadays in neocolonialism and neoliberalism. The main difference, and a very dangerous one, is that most of the major nations today have nuclear weapons to fight each other with. I don't see how Engdahl can be so sanguine about the future.

The only peaceful future is one that we ordinary people must secure for ourselves by ending the rule of capitalists and their destructive, unsustainable system. There is simply no other alternative.

(Note: For more background on the petrodollar you might be interested in reading this and this.)

Avaaz: The Online Pro-War Propagandist And Color Revolution NGO

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

I have posted numerous articles on Avaaz in the past (see this, this, this, this, and this), but I still think that this organization needs more light shed on it. Organizations like Avaaz have often been used in "color revolutions" to destabilize countries that refuse to follow orders from the US Empire or to gain a more friendly ally. And such organizations also are meant to seduce well-meaning liberals and leftists to work for them by their appeals to human rights, democracy, and freedom.

Avaaz is, indeed, part of the color revolution apparatus, having apparently received funds from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation to start up in 2007. Avaaz was founded by Res Publica and Moveon.org, both Soros-funded organizations that attempt to co-opt the American left into supporting ideas and campaigns closely associated with the communitarian foundation oligarchs.

How Corrupt the U.S. Is: An Extraordinary Example

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from The Peoples Voice. 

...for imprisonments, the U.S. really does have no close second: it’s the unquestionable global market-leader, for prisons and prisoners.

Historian Zuesse examines one significance aspect that law-breaking has regarding the legitimacy of a nation's governance.

...by definition, people are presumed to be in prison for law-breaking, irrespective of whether the given nation’s laws are just — and, if they’re not just, then this fact reflects even more strongly that the nation itself is corrupt. So: a high incarceration-rate does strongly tend to go along with a nation’s being highly corrupt, in more than merely a technical sense — it’s almost more like being the definitive measure of “corruption.” So, the correlation between incarceration rates and corruption must be assumed to be high, and any measure of corruption which fails to at least include countries’ incarceration rates should be rejected.

Another myth busted

by Andy Singer from The Cagle Post. 

Access to capital is by far the biggest factor in producing an individual's wealth under capitalism.

Divergence at the top in the U.S.

Click here to access article by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

Ruccio supplies data to show that there really is a core .01% that is concentrating wealth (and power) in their hands.

Voting Is for Chumps: Veteran Congressional Staffer Says 'Deep State' Already Controls America

Click here to access article by Riley Waggaman from Russia Insider. 

This is an illustration of the phenomenon about the rising discussion of the "deep state" or "shadow government" in American discourse, especially in alternative blogs. In general I think it is also an illustration of an attempt at damage control by our masters to prevent radical consequences that such an awareness could bring about. This time the damage controller is surprisingly an editor of Russia Insider.

I'm referring to Waggaman's use of quotes toward the end of the article from an interview by the former Congressional staffer so that we don't reach any "wrong" conclusions. Essentially the former Congressional staffer, Lofgren, asserts that it, the "deep state", doesn't qualify as a conspiracy because it is all done in the open; and that we, the people, already know who runs the US. Yes, Lofgren trots out the old "blame the victim" trick to provide cover for the real deep state, and then Waggaman ends with a joke so that we don't get into a tizzy about it all. 

However I'm not sure about Waggaman's point. As always with my commentaries, you must decide.

Radioactive oatmeal fed to children: Just one, in a long line, of heinous government experiments

Click here to access article by Melissa Dykes from Activist Post. 

It’s getting harder to focus on the “news”.

Considering that all media is filtered through just five megacorporations (compared with 50 companies in the early ’80s), not to mention (but I will) the fact that domestic propaganda was officially “approved” for use against the American people a few years ago, it’s kinda hard to tell the difference between what is real and what isn’t anymore.

Besides, it’s all “hey look, shiny things”. Pay attention to the right hand so you won’t see what the left is doing.

The distractions on the “news” also serve another purpose. To fill up your short term memory like junk food for the brain. To keep you from remembering what happened last week, let alone last year. From putting these things into perspective, especially historical perspective.

We’ve undertaken a large-scale research project. We’re six months in. I was reading The Plutonium Files, a book on the American government’s top secret medical experimentation against mostly unwitting, clueless American citizens during the Cold War.

What follows this relatively bland introduction might make you throw-up!

The Humiliated Masses

Click here to access article by "td0s" from Pray for Calamity. 

The author describes a very disturbing and provocative visit to Chicago and seeing Star Wars, the latest Hollywood flick. He describes this visit in the language of a poet.

We have a lot of masters. We are made pitiful by clerks as well as clocks. We are degraded not just [by] politicians and police but by abstractions and imaginary lines. We so badly need to forge time and space to be quiet, to meditate, to speak softly about just who we think we are. Technology interrupts. The buzzing of other people’s demands seeps in through the cracks to find us, to distract us, to constantly hurry us up, to tire us out, to intoxicate us, to leave us slumped over and worn.

So we go to the movies and watch civilization collapse. We envy those who get to rebuild, if only on the screen. If we keep buying such stories, they will keep selling them. And we will surely never live them.

From Copenhagen To Delhi: 'Smart Cities' Call For Smart Solutions - Like Cycling

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

Throughout the world, there is now a desire to improve public health and combat climate change. As a result, Copenhagen’s renowned cycle-friendly policies are now serving as a template for some of the world’s most congested cities. 

This piece by Todhunter brought back so many pleasant memories of cycling with my Canadian friends through various parts of Canada. One benefit he didn't elaborate on--because he was focused on cycling as an efficient way of transporting people and as a way to promote a healthy environment--was the personal health benefits of cycling. I'm referring to both physical and mental health. After moving back to the US I have lived in an area that is not conducive to cycling, and also because of my advanced age I no longer cycle. I miss it, and I miss the health benefits--I use to be in such great shape!

Anyway, his description of cycling in Denmark reminded me of Quebec where I cycled in 2005 and found cycling, especially between cities, to be especially convenient and pleasant.

The lottery and social despair in America

Click here to access article by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site.

It appears that the old religious fantasies about heaven used to pacify plundered populations in the past has gone through a series of updates. The latest under the rule of capitalism is the use of state lotteries to induce workers to dream about heaven on earth today to distract them from thinking about the deterioration in their standard of living.

For American workers, achieving the “American Dream” of a stable job and one’s own home is becoming increasingly unrealizable.

Following more than 10 million foreclosures during the financial crisis, America’s home ownership rate has hit the lowest level in two decades, and for young households, the rate of home ownership is the lowest it has been since the 1960s.

For the tens of millions of America’s poor, and the more than 100 million on the threshold of poverty, the dream of winning the lottery has replaced the “American Dream” of living a decent life.

On Racism and Empire: The Skeleton of US Capitalism and the Basis of United Resistance

Click here to access article by Danny Haiphong from Global Independent Analytics.

The US is an Empire of global capital and for global capital. Its reign of terror has divided the globe into two camps. In the imperial camp, numerous states around the world serve as willful partners of US Empire or hold positions as subjugated neo-colonies. In the resistance camp, non-aligned nations such as Russia and China have maintained relative independence from the US Empire despite varying modes of development and differing interests within the resistance. Racism has been a central component to US Empire's endless warfare on the resistance camp. It has been the primary means from which the Empire has sought to achieve its objectives. 

Haiphong then continues with historical illustrations of the Empire's use of racism in an attempt to achieve world hegemony.

After 60 years of nuclear power, the industry survives only on stupendous subsidies

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from the Ecologist. 

The entire industry would not exist without massive government subsidies. Quite an insult: Subsidies prop up an industry that points a dagger at the heart of the communities where ever it operates.

The building of nuclear power plants drastically slowed after the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, so it is at a minimum reckless that the latest attempt to resuscitate nuclear power pushes forward heedless of Fukushima's discharge of radioactive materials into the air, soil and ocean.

There are no definitive statistics on the amount of subsidies enjoyed by nuclear power providers - in part because there so many different types of subsidies - but it amounts to a figure, whether we calculate in dollars, euros or pounds, in the hundreds of billions.

Toward the end of the article he does provide many links to documents that give some idea of the huge subsidies that this industry receives. 

An ever expanding capitalist economy must have growth and only nuclear power can fuel this growth after the inevitable decline in accessible fossil fuels. Our masters are addicted to capitalism which provides them with so much power and wealth. They are perfectly okay with having you support this industry with your taxes (because they pay little), and are perfectly willing to experience one disaster after another in a desperate attempt to save their goose of capitalism that lays for them so many golden eggs. Thus out of a fake concern for the environment, capitalist sponsored leaders in government are now pushing nuclear energy.

2016: Oil Limits and the End of the Debt Supercycle

Click here to access article by Gail Tverberg from her blog Our Finite World.

What is ahead for 2016? Most people don’t realize how tightly the following are linked:

1.     Growth in debt
2.     Growth in the economy
3.     Growth in cheap-to-extract energy supplies
4.     Inflation in the cost of producing commodities
5.     Growth in asset prices, such as the price of shares of stock and of farmland
6.     Growth in wages of non-elite workers
7.     Population growth

It looks to me as though this linkage is about to cause a very substantial disruption to the economy, as oil limits, as well as other energy limits, cause a rapid shift from the benevolent version of the economic supercycle to the portion of the economic supercycle reflecting contraction. Many people have talked about Peak Oil, the Limits to Growth, and the Debt Supercycle without realizing that the underlying problem is really the same–the fact the we are reaching the limits of a finite world.

Trans-Canada sues US for $15 billion over KXL refusal

Click here to access article by Guy Taylor from the Ecologist.

In a dramatic example of the powers assumed by the corporate world through trade deals, energy infrastructure corporation TransCanada has commenced legal actions against the US president for cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline project.

The Wages of Whiteness is Early Death

Click here to access article by Paul Street from CounterPunch. (a "best post")

Somehow I managed to miss this important article when it was first posted last November, but it was brought to my attention today by being posted currently in Uncommon Thought Journal.

Unlike many other apparently middle class writers like David Malone whose limited vision can only see the decline of middle class life and the associated loss of "democracy", Street is fully aware of working class history and the ubiquitous myths about the existence of "democracy" in Western nations. Street brilliantly focuses on the use of racism by the US ruling capitalist class to obscure the powerlessness, poverty, and exploitation of working people in America throughout its history. Now under neoliberalism the US middle class, which enjoyed many advantages in the past, is beginning to feel what working people have always experienced. He sees another indication of this with recently released data:

 ...some remarkable data reported across major U.S, media earlier this November. “Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans,” The New York Times noted: “Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.”

Donald Trump vs. the Mainstream Media

Click here to access article by William Blum from Foreign Policy Journal.

The main way that capitalists have always formed the dominant class in the US is with the power that their money gives them. With their huge concentrations of money they control how elections are conducted: how candidates are selected and backed with money, how political parties are funded, how mainstream media shapes the information about these candidates, and how other people are shut out of the political process. 

But this election season offered a rare new candidate, Donald Trump, who was not under the control of the current directors of the ruling capitalist class. This candidate had accumulated his own pile of money while playing in the game of capitalism. And, what he says is not carefully scripted by these directors, and mainstream media which is owned and controlled by the capitalist directorate doesn't like his maverick ways, and especially does not like the way Trump often challenges their lies. Watch the 12:40m video in the article to see an illustration of this.

Vulgar, crude, racist and ultra-sexist though he is, Donald Trump can still see how awful the American mainstream media is.

Discussing New Hillary Libya Emails on the Scott Horton Show

Click here to access a 27:31m interview conducted by Scott Horton with Brad Hoff from Levant.

Hoff offers his take on the recent Hillary Clinton emails which reveal behind the scenes creation of propaganda used in mainstream media, the use of terrorist armies in the overthrow of the Qaddafi, and some discussion of a gold-backed African currency which was seen by Empire operatives as intolerable. The control over the issuance of money is an Empire vital interest.

Media Blackout: NATO Returns to Libya

Click here to access article by Rudy Panko from Russia Insider. 

But then history has a way of surprising people, and it did after 1990 with the growth of a powerful China and the newly found independence of Russian nationalism. Of course the US Empire directors could not accept these new obstructive rivals to their world dominance, and thus made Russia and China a new version of an enemy.

One of the major advantages of being a NATO member is that you are allowed to conduct military operations in any country of your choosing, with minimal (or no) news coverage and absolutely zero debate.

This delightful perk is more or less written into NATO's charter. And it's been an especially perky perk with regards to Libya —once the richest, most developed nation in North Africa; now a moon crater.

What is Surplus Value, and Why Should Anti-Capitalists Care?

Click here to access article by Stephanie McMillan from Skewed News. 

After this cartoon McMillan gives us a lesson on "surplus value", a key concept obscured by capitalist indoctrination agencies.

In Syria Petition, an Odd “Left’ Abandoned Concrete Analysis for Demagogy

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from What's Left. 

In May 2013, a group calling itself the Global Campaign for Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution promoted a petition which called for “Solidarity with the Syrian Struggle for Dignity and Freedom.” The petition listed Gilbert Achcar, Richard Seymour, Tariq Ali, Vijay Prashad, Norman Finklestein and Ilan Pape among its supporters. 

It was shocking to read the names Gowans listed in support of ousting Assad, and then I was really upset to read the 2013 petition names which included John Holloway. However, I would award much more respect for Gowans' exposure if he had posted this article much earlier. We all know that hindsight is 20/20, and Gowans by using such a lens seems to adopt a very superior attitude. 

Still, it is a warning to especially all those who are presented with a petition that seems to support a good cause and is supported by others whose judgement we trust. It is also a lesson for activists, who desire the approval of other activists, to maintain as a priority their own critical thinking faculties. Such groupthink is very seductive and can easily lead one astray. 

Truth is the highest virtue and it is a collective effort to strive for the best truth much like everything else. It is no sin to disagree respectfully with other well-meaning activists. A collective effort to arrive at the best truth has been contaminated by living in a capitalist culture whose highest virtues stress individualism and, at the same time, conformity to those who are regarded as "in the know".

2016 Theme #4: The End-Game of Debt-Fueled “Growth”

Click here to access article by Charles Hugh Smith from Washington's Blog. 

The goal of borrowing and blowing trillions was to re-invigorate “growth”— any kind of “growth,” no matter how wasteful, unproductive or even counter-productive it might be: wars, nation-building, ghost cities, needless MRIs, useless college diplomas, bridge to nowhere–anything the borrowed money was squandered on counts as “growth” in the Keynesian status quo.

He continues on with charts to show that this growth is debt-fueled and the economic returns are minuscule. Indications of this are the current phenomenon of everyone having a debt-score, debt burdened consumers, sovereign debts, and wars. The debt is owned by the "One Percent" of the capitalist world who are launching wars as a desperate means of having their debts repaid by conquered territories, control of resources, cheap labor, and consumer markets.

Decommodification, Liberation, Education: Commonwealth as Aesthetic Form of an Alienation-Free Society

Click here to access article by Charles Reitz from the Heathwood Institute.

This a chapter from retired Prof. Reitz's forthcoming book entitled Philosophy & Critical Pedagogy. As such it is written for a more academically oriented audience.

The 1 percent’s enormous accumulation of private property has not led to the self-actualization of the human species or its individual constituents, as the neoliberal business utopians assert, but to the continuation of war and poverty, and to the delusions of grandeur and self-destruction on the part of our current Masters of the Universe on Wall Street. The radical goal of socialism is to reclaim our common humanity through public work for the public good. Sensuous living labor, through its own agency and revolutionary humanism, has within its power the transformation of the social wealth production process into the production of our common wealth.

A commonwealth counter-offensive is the political challenge today.

Time is money

by Max Gustafson.

New Hillary Emails Reveal Propaganda, Executions, Coveting Libyan Oil and Gold

Click here to access article by Brad Hoff from Levant Report. 

...historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency.

The Balfour Declaration binds Saudi Arabia to an Alliance with Israel

Click here to access article by Nu’man Abd al-Wahid from his blog Churchill's Karma. 

According to Black Commentator the author's brief biography:

Nu'man Abd al-Wahid is a UK-based freelance writer (of Yemeni origin) who specializes in the political relationship between the British state and the Arab World. His focus is on how Britain has historically maintained its interests in the Arab World and the Middle East.

The writer provides what appears to be solid documentation to support his thesis that the British Empire (which has since merged with the US Empire) created the nation of Saudi Arabia (as well as other nations in the Middle East) by perfidious means, and as one consequence has bound Saudi Arabia into an informal alliance with Israel. 

...one must go back to the 1920’s to fully appreciate the origins of this informal and indirect alliance between KSA and the Zionist entity. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire by British imperialism in World War One, left three distinct authorities in the Arabian peninsula: Sharif of Hijaz: Hussain bin Ali of Hijaz (in the west), Ibn Rashid of Ha’il (in the north) and Emir Ibn Saud of Najd (in the east) and his religiously fanatical followers, the Wahhabis.

(Note: One major reference he alludes to, but doesn't furnish a reference to, is the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence. I found an excellent reference furnished by Wikipedia.)

Saudi-Iranian spat: Another skirmish in the oil war

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from RT. 

Referring to the Saudi's strategy of keeping oil prices low, Escobar writes:

From the House of Saud’s budget dilemma perspective, this is absolutely unsustainable. The House of Saud is the biggest OPEC oil exporter. Yet their supreme hubris is to deny Iran any leeway in exports, which will be inevitable especially in the second half of 2016. Moreover, the low oil price strategy doesn’t apply solely to Iran: it’s still part of the oil war against Russia.

Somebody though is not doing the math right in Riyadh.

You might also be interested in this post which reports that China is trying to preserve peace in the region with the current visit of Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Ming in Saudi Arabia.

Russia Versus Ukraine: The Court Case and the IMF

Click here to access article by Alexander Mercouris posted on Russia Insider.

This is chiefly a response to Michael Hudson's article in which he interpreted the new IMF rule changes as posing dire consequences for both Russia and China. Mercouris brings his legal experience to contribute to an understanding of this very complicated situation. 

In his article Michael Hudson worries that before long no Western court will recognise a loan owed to China or Russia, allowing states to default on loans to those countries with impunity.

One day it may indeed come to that.  However for the moment the situation is not quite as bad as Michael Hudson thinks.

Unhealthy healthcare

Click here to access article by David F. Ruccio from Occasional Links & Commentary. 

Ruccio, an economist, asks and answers the question: "How could you design a fundamentally unhealthy healthcare system?" He then follows up with data that indicates that we apparently have a very unaffordable Affordable Care program that provides unhealthy healthcare. He introduces his essay with the following insightful cartoon by Barry Deutsch.

Deep State Rising: The Mainstreaming of the Shadow Government

Click here to access article by James Corbett posted on his website.

...an odd phenomenon has taken place in recent years and intensified in recent months: the idea of a “deep state” or a “shadow government” controlling politics, even in the US, is becoming mainstream.

I think that Corbett has been communicating with his peers and spending time on liberal and alternative media a bit too much to come to the conclusion that the shadow government has been mainstreamed. Yes, there are a few careless remarks by such people as Hillary Clinton suggesting a deep state, journalists like Seymour Hersh exposing some truths about the deep state in obscure publications, or Joe Biden who when speaking to an educated audience does tell many truths about important subjects and these are reported in a few ruling class media such as the NY Times and the Washington Post, but such remarks are few and far between lies that are incessantly repeated in all of mainstream media and reinforced by Hollywood films. The reality is that the vast majority of Americans get their news and views from the latter. 

There is considerable evidence that most TV news and information programs are carefully controlled and monitored by the CIA: see this, this, this, this, and this. Meanwhile our opinion leaders and ideological gatekeepers sometimes recognize views that are widely discussed in alternative media, but mostly this is an effort at damage control and directed at educated audiences. As long as they can keep the vast majority of Americans believing their lies and myths, as long as they keep tight control over every institution, and maintain militarized police forces that operate with impunity, they don't worry about an educated few.

The Great Capitalist Climacteric

Click here to access article by John Bellamy Foster from the Monthly Review. 

I will use the term the Great Capitalist Climacteric here to refer to the necessary epochal social transition associated with the current planetary emergency. It refers both to the objective necessity of a shift to a sustainable society and to the threat to the existence of Homo sapiens (as well as numerous other species) if the logic of capital accumulation is allowed to continue dictating to society as a whole. 

Foster ends up with a challenge for humans to save themselves or else perish:

“The dream that man can make himself godlike by centering his energies solely on the conquest of the external world,” Mumford wrote in The Condition of Man, “has now become the emptiest of dreams: empty and sinister.” The result is a kind of economics of exterminism. Today making war on the planet is fought as a means to the end of capital accumulation, in which the limits of the earth itself have become invisible to the narrow value calculations of the system. Turning this economics of exterminism around, and creating a more just and sustainable world at peace with the planet is our task in the Great Capitalist Climacteric. If we cannot accomplish this humanity will surely die with capitalism. The prophesy of all defenders of the current order over the last century will then be fulfilled. Capitalism will mark the end of human history by bringing to an end human civilization—and even human existence. 

Seymour Hersh exposes how Obama supports ISIS at all costs, even ignoring advice from his own Joint Chiefs of Staff

Click here if you wish to access this video interview directly from the post on Red Pill Times. 

Hersh essentially summarizes his recent report entitled "Military to Military" and refuses to speculate on why the administration does not follow the recommendations of its own intelligence services. It seems rather obvious to me that the administration's policies are consistent with a general strategy of fomenting divisions among Arabs and creating chaos in order to achieve a breakup of countries such as Iraq and Syria, and control the region better to serve the interests of the Empire and Israel. I think Hersh must know this, but simply can't say it in order to preserve his neutrality and his contacts among the military.

The article, titled “Military to Military” alleges, based on sources within the military, that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Intelligence Agency advised President Obama against an “Assad must go” policy back in 2013, fearing if Assad fell the country would plunge into utter chaos or into the hands of extremists.

When the Obama Administration seemed to ignore the advice, according to Hersh’s sources the Joint Chiefs began sharing intelligence with Russia, Germany, and Israel with the understanding it would be sent to the Assad regime and aide its fight against ISIS and other extremists groups. In the interview, Hersh discusses the implications of his story, the US’s relationship with Turkey, and why the mainstream media is quick to attack him.

Saudi Arabia Cuts Heads to Make a Point

Click here to access article by Jeremy Salt from The Palestine Chronicle.

By deliberately provoking Iran Saudi Arabia is reasserting itself as the guardian of Sunni orthodoxy. There is little or no respect for the government of Saudi Arabia and its royal family in the Muslim world but sectarianism has muddled many minds and pushed to make a choice between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the great majority of Sunnis will come in behind the Saudis. So will the US. Having persuaded Iran to sign a nuclear agreement which very much damages Iranian national sovereignty, the Americans have already begun welching on the deal by raising the possibility of new sanctions. It has criticized the execution of Sheikh Nimr but in any new standoff between the Saudis and Iran it also will throw its support behind the Saudi government. Israel – Saudi Arabia’s half covert ally – will naturally welcome the re-ignition of confrontation with the government of the Islamic republic.Saudi Arabia is in the throes of an acute multifaceted existential crisis.

Wall Street Taking Over Nonprofit Sector

Click here to access article by Dan Wright from ShadowProof. 

The author cites a recent Stanford study which shows an increase of people from the financial sector appearing on the boards of non-profit organizations (same as NGOs when applied to such organizations in foreign countries). 

[T]he percentage of people from finance on the boards virtually doubled at all three types of nonprofits between 1989 and 2014.

What this trend of direct control indicates, I believe, is the increasing concentration of the core capitalist ruling class over every institution of society. In the past they were satisfied with indirect control; but as their power (derived from concentrated wealth) has become so pronounced, they are taking direct control over every institution as a kind of insurance policy to see that the entire society is functioning according to their interests. This is another way of expressing the trend toward fascism in the US--the direct control by primarily financial and secondarily industrial corporations over US society. 

There is no well-defined boundary line between indirect capitalist control and direct capitalist or fascist control of a nation. The major events signaling this trend were the defeat of the Populist movement in late 1800s; the establishment of private banking control over our money with the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913; after WWII the purging of leftists during the McCarthy period and curtailment of the rights of labor unions, and the growing cancer of secret services like the CIA to shield US imperial policies from public scrutiny.

The challenge for the current capitalist directors of our nation is to maintain the facade of democratic ideology while practicing fascist control over every institution. This gulf between ideology and practice is reflected in the increasing separation from reality that corporate media provides in their coverage of world and domestic events in spite of a few heroic journalists. It is no accident that journalists are becoming a most inviting target for murder by US forces and other countries throughout the world.

The many hypocrisies of the Oregon standoff

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

Dolack explains how the the current event in western Oregon illustrates some insights about the neoliberal (capitalist) orientation of our ruling class and why this event is responded to differently by enforcement agencies and is covered differently by corporate news agencies than other incidents of a similar nature.

Neoliberalism equates “freedom” with individualism, but as a specific form of individualism that is shorn of responsibility. “Freedom” for industrialists and financiers is freedom to rule over, control and exploit others; “justice” is the unfettered ability to enjoy this freedom, a justice reflected in legal structures. Working people are “free” to compete in a race to the bottom set up by capitalists. This is the freedom loftily extolled by the corporate media, and this is the basis of the freedom right-wing militias and their supporters say they want.

The Business of War

Click here to access article by Asad Zaman from the World Economics Association.

Referring to Major General Smedley Butler and his classic book, War is a Racket, Zaman writes:

Butler writes that a “racket” is a deception: war is not what it appears to be to the majority of people. Only a small “inside” group knows the truth, and makes huge fortunes from war while the masses sacrifice their lives for fabricated causes. A recent article in Foreign Policy re-iterated the message that “War is still a racket” by showing how some groups are making trillions in profits from the perpetual war against terror.

The capitalist team that never loses

by Pat Bagley, cartoonist for the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Saudi Arabia’s Growing Body Count

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

The swamp of hypocrisy exhibited by the Empire's media grows ever deeper.

That the Western political establishment and the media monopolies that serve as its voice, selectively report on and exploit perceived human rights abuses in some nations, while intentionally muting, spinning, or otherwise covering up very real abuses by other nations, illustrates perfectly the West’s selective enforcement of what it claims are its central organizing principles – democracy, freedom, and the defense of human rights.

It should be noted that the West – and the United States in particular – used military force to topple the government in Libya in 2011 on “humanitarian” grounds and that the West’s involvement in Syria has been predicated on similar grounds. Why then, has the West not moved against Saudi Arabia, who is openly declaring war on not only its own people, but on its neighbors, including most notably Yemen?

Indeed, the West’s hypocrisy goes far beyond this more recent mass execution.

How Bulgaria supplied drugs and weapons to Al-Qaïda and Daesh

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from VoltaireNet.  (a "best post")

This explosive piece of solid investigative reporting by the Frenchman reveals so much about the US Empire, its criminal friends, the duplicitous operations of the CIA, Saudi Arabia and its medieval allies and their support of terrorism.

The best-kept secrets must be revealed in the end. The mafia cartel which governs Bulgaria has been caught supplying drugs and weapons to Al-Qaïda and Daesh, at the demand of the CIA, both in Libya and Syria. The affair is all the more serious since Bulgaria is a member of NATO and the European Union.

The Year the 'European Dream' Finally Caved In

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from TeleSur. 

Roos provides much food for thought as he briefly reviews the failure of the much lauded European Union which has turned out to be a neoliberal nightmare. 

So, what lies ahead? That depends upon the people in Europe, on us here in the US, and ordinary people everywhere. Neoliberalism is not only destructive of life in Europe, it is a cancer that is eating away at societies everywhere. Only we, the people, can stop this living nightmare from consuming all our lives.

You might also be interested in comments about the crisis of capitalism by Prof. Wolfgang Streeck whom editors of RoarMag identify as "one of Europe’s foremost economic sociologists". 

President Obama catches Netanyahu bribing republican congressmen to change their Iran votes

Click here to access article by Bill Palmer from Daily News Bin.

While it’s not uncommon for members of congress to offer each other political favors in exchange for votes on various bills, it’s an entirely different legal matter when those offers come from a foreign head of state.

I am only posting this because corporate media refuses to do so and because it conveniently lies behind a paywall at the Wall Street Journal. It is only another illustration of the subversion and corruption of the US government (no, it's not your government unless your are rich) by people with money regardless if they live here in the US or in some foreign country. Normally, the Israelis rely on all expense paid junkets to Israel where they wine and dine Congressmen and Senators to influence their votes to serve Israeli interests.

Hearing the Russian Perspective [warning below]

Click here to access article by Gilbert Doctorow from ConsortiumNews.

Without mincing words, the new Russian documentary World Order is a devastating critique of U.S. global hegemony justified in the name of “democracy promotion” and “human rights” ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1992.

It is directly in line with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first repudiation of the American unipolar world issued in his speech to the Munich Security Conference in February 2007 and his further, ever more explicit exposés in a succession of speeches that challenged specific manifestations of “American exceptionalism.”

World Order, which is now posted on YouTube (in Russian) and at another site (with English subtitles), illustrates through graphic footage and the testimony of independent world authorities the tragic consequences, the spread of chaos and misery, resulting from U.S.-engineered “regime change” and “color revolutions,”

Although this post is an exception to my usual practice of only posting articles that I have read (or viewed), I agree with Doctorow and any intelligent person that we need to hear the other side and all sides to major issues facing the world. We must not be like those who practice "willful ignorance" by following only those authoritative sources given to us by our ruling class.

This film can be viewed here in the US with English subtitles by using this link which takes you to a series of 7 videos making up the film. 

8:40 PM Pacific Time zone: I have viewed the first three videos at the LiveLeak site, but couldn't find the rest. Because the Russian script was so poorly translated and the LiveLeak website where I could view the interview in English was suspicious, I regret this post and do not recommend it for viewing. The YouTube link that Doctrorow listed (in Russian) might be okay. 

Reform Is Not Enough to Stem the Rising Tide of Inequality Worldwide

Click here to access article by William I. Robinson from TruthOut.

The sociology professor and author of Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity argues that the built in ownership and profit factors in capitalism makes extreme accumulation of wealth by owners and extreme inequality inevitable. He takes on people who, in order to save the system that lays the capitalists' golden eggs of power and wealth, have advocated reforms in the past, such as Keynesian policies. However in spite of the past attempts at reforming capitalism, things have only gotten worse. But we still see people today, like Piketty, advocating reforms. The problem is inherent in the system itself, and this time we must change the system.

This is what in critical political economy constitutes the underlying internal contradiction of capitalism, or the overaccumulation problem. Left unchecked, expanding social polarization results in crisis - in recessions and depressions, such as the 1930s Great Depression or the 2008 Great Recession. Worse still, it engenders great social upheavals, political conflicts, wars and even revolutions - precisely the kinds of conflicts and chaos we are witnessing in the world today.

In the view of the reformers, however, it is not the capitalist system itself, but its particular institutional organization that is to blame for inequalities. They believe it can be offset by increased taxes, social welfare programs and other reformist measures.