Panama partners in crime

Click here to access article by David Malone from Golem XIV (Britain). 

“We have broken no laws and cooperated with the government at all times.”

Variations of that statement seem to be the default defence of everyone from bankers to politicians when their names come up in the Panama Papers.

Malone explains what is really meant by these exculpatory statements.

He concludes his essay by observing:

It has been and remains just the way the system they profit by, works.  The only people who were not to know is us – The little people of every country, who are told they must pay their taxes, accept cuts because they aren’t paying enough taxes, and obey the laws and respect their betters. 

The "system" has a name: capitalism.

Climate Disruption Brings Record Wildfire to Kansas -- and It's Only Spring

Click here to access article by Dahr Jamail from TruthOut.

What we are seeing in Kansas is simply the micro of the macro, a symptom of a world that is increasingly susceptible to burning. We live on a planet that is approaching a global temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial average temperatures: a level not seen in the last 110,000 years.

‘Corruption’ as a Propaganda Weapon

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews.

I have in recent years frequently expressed my astonishment at the deterioration of corporate news into what looks like pure capitalist ruling class propaganda. This perspective is based on my experience as an activist over the past 60 years. Corporate news reports have never been free of such bias, but now this mainstream media appear to be used almost entirely as a propaganda weapon against enemies of the US ruling class. 

This article by Parry was apparently provoked by the recent reports carried all over corporate media about the release of the so-called "Panama Papers". The coverage was mostly framed as a Putin corruption scandal except that Putin was never named in the released papers. This coverage caused Parry to conclude that US corporate media are now being used for political purposes:

Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.”

Far too often, this sort of “journalism” is just a forerunner to the next “regime change” scheme, dirtying up or delegitimizing a foreign leader before the inevitable advent of a “color revolution” organized by “democracy-promoting” NGOs often with money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy or some neoliberal financier like George Soros.

It appears that our ruling class masters are seeing signs that many people are doubting the reports of corporate media especially because of discerning articles by bloggers such as Parry carried via the internet. Hence the recent piece carried in the US capitalist mouthpiece Bloomberg News which framed a report about one person, Andrés Sepúlveda, using the "Internet", but in reality he was using mostly social media carried via Internet technology, to rig elections in Latin American countries. (Of course, this never happens in the US.) Bloomberg authors describe what a former employer said about Sepuvida:

Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe’s turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts. The software let him quickly change names, profile pictures, and biographies to fit any need. Eventually, he discovered, he could manipulate the public debate as easily as moving pieces on a chessboard—or, as he puts it, “When I realized that people believe what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to make people believe almost anything.” [my emphasis]

The Bloomberg article mixed social media manipulation (which has happened) in with World Wide Web articles (which can be true or false or somewhere in between) carried via the Internet to cast doubt on the latter in favor of "experts on television and in newspapers" owned by major corporations.

It’s not just Europeans who will feel the consequences of TTIP

Click here to access article by Diane Abbott from New Statesman (Britain).

As more is revealed about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), it is clear that it has little to do with improving trade. If implemented corporations will have the power to force governments to put corporate interests above the needs of their own citizens.

From labour protection to public health, corporations are using the a rapidly-growing private justice system known as Investor-State Dispute Settlements, the proposed enforcement mechanism for TTIP, to sue governments for anticipated lost future profits incurred from the passage of democratically-decided regulation.

If it sounds dystopian, that’s because it is.

All of these neoliberal trade treaties also include the poison pill of the Investor-State Dispute Settlements section.

Apartheid South Africa And Apartheid Israel: One Was Shunned, The Other, Embraced

Click here to access article by Robert Fantina from Mint Press News. 

...it appears that money and fear play a significant role in global support for Israel, but that support is quickly fading, as more countries recognize Palestine and condemn Israel. Steps by the European Union requiring appropriate labeling of Israeli goods produced on occupied land; the increasing academic, economic and entertainment boycott of Israel; and even the U.S., Israel’s main financier, approval of the Iran nuclear agreement that Israel spent as much as $40 million opposing, all point to a major change in world opinion.

Today, with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement gaining traction at universities, religious organizations and labor unions, the same methods that ended apartheid in South Africa are being implemented to accomplish the same thing in Israel. 

For Your Own Good! Embedding Transnational Agribusiness And GMOs Into African Agriculture

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

The ‘philanthropy’ currently being dished out in Africa does not empower local farmers but is aimed at getting GMOs (with all of the associated problems) into agriculture, sucking farmers into the prevailing power structures of US capitalism and marginalising credible, alternative approaches based on self-sufficiency, sustainability and sound ecological practices. 

Kurd Autonomy: Is it Kerry’s Plan B or Putin’s Plan A?

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

Engdahl looks at some of the strange happenings in and around Syria and sees some shrewd Machiavellian games being played. For example, both the US and Russia support the Syrian Kurds, but for very different reasons as he explains. 

At this point it rather looks like a shrewd judo by Putin, himself an old judo master, with a Judo 8th Dan and sitting as Honorary President of the European Judo Union. It looks like Russia, despite its air force drawdown and troop pull-back, has just established the first “No Fly” zone in Syria, the most-wanted aim of the US Pentagon and Turkey only five months ago, as the necessary step to topple Assad and the Syrian government and create a weak government presiding over a Balkanized Syria. Only the Russian no fly zone has a quite different aim–to protect the Syrian Kurds from a possible Turkish military attack. 

Then there is the Israeli trade deals with Russia cutting in on such deals with Turkey. All these maneuverings leave many questions. One thing is clear: deception is the name of the game.

The Struggle for Brazil – And Against the BRICS

Click here to access article by Dan Steinbock from China-US Focus.

In the view of Washington (and Brazil’s opposition), Lula, Rousseff and the PT remain controversial because their emphasis on multipolarity (which excludes American exceptionalism); support of the BRICS (which is seen to operate against the US and G7 interests); funding for the BRICS New Development Band and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (which are seen to undermine the power of G7 international multilateral organizations); efforts to overcome income polarization (which is regarded as potentially subversive), Latin American integration (which is perceived as anti-NAFTA) and alternative global Internet regime (which would bypass U.S. control); and a multipolar currency basket (which is seen as an attempt to emasculate the global dominance of the U.S. dollar).

In this narrative, Brazil’s destabilization is strategic and less about the rise of democracy than about an effort to replace it with new authoritarianism.

For me this piece raises questions about the authenticity of the Zika virus crisis which has received extensive coverage in corporate media. Could this crisis have been manufactured and is being used as another weapon to discourage Americans from attending the Olympics in Brazil? See this, this, and this.

I've noticed in recent years that whenever the capitalist ruling directorate has an interest in media coverage of an event, no matter for what devious purposes, corporate media will provide extensive coverage. I'm thinking especially of the Mubarak regime change riots in Egypt in 2011 and the revolution in Ukraine in 2014, both of which received widespread TV coverage in the US. The same is true of the Zika virus (always associated with Brazil) in which TV programs have featured many sensational pictures of pin-head infants.

Selective Leaks Of The #PanamaPapers Create Huge Blackmail Potential

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

Bernhard's investigation of this incident suggests another instance of the use of deception by the directors of the capitalist ruling class to smear their opponents and control others through the use of blackmail.

A real leak of data from a law firm in Panama would be very interesting. Many rich people and/or politicians hide money in shell companies that such firms in Panama provide. But the current heavily promoted "leak" of such data to several NATO supporting news organization and a US government financed "Non Government Organization" is just a lame attempt to smear some people the U.S. empire dislikes. It also creates a huge blackmail opportunity by NOT publishing certain data in return for this or that desired favor. 

The Stark Realities of Baked-In Catastrophes

Click here to access article by xraymike79 from Collapse of Industrial Civilization. 

  
The globalized capitalist economy externalizes its destruction and atrocities, keeping the masses in a state of ignorance and denial. Our corporate overlords are not conscientious citizens, but mindless organizations whose sole purpose is to grow profits no matter the external damage done to society and the environment. Between the economic oil hitmen who ensure that profits flow smoothly and GOP [capitalist] politicians who openly espouse their science illiteracy, a hospitable climate for future humans seems remote. [my editing]

Zionism, Genocide and the Colonial Tradition in Contemporary Syria [a must-read treatise]

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

I regard Gowans as having a first-rate mind; a mind which reflects clarity of thinking, mostly free of ideological mind-traps that most thinkers fall into, and well informed by having had access to the best intellectual sources. Nobody is infallible, but there are some people who have been blessed with abilities, time, and opportunities to offer the very best analyses to help us understand some of the urgent issues facing humans today. There are numerous articles available over the internet and most are read and quickly thrown away like most consumer products. This is not one of those products. This is a major treatise (of moderate length) that beams a powerful light through the fog of propaganda to help us understand what is going on in the strife-ridden Middle East.

By studying this treatise you will come to understand that what is going on in the Middle East is an updated version of old-fashioned colonialism known as neocolonialism:

Saudi Arabia, along with Israel, stands as one of the most important regional allies of the international dictatorship of the United States. And, as protégés of the dictatorship, the Saudi rulers long ago reconciled themselves to the existence of a Jewish state as an outpost of Western imperialism in the middle (literally) of the Arab nation.... As much as Israel, Saudi Arabia is a satrapy of the United States.

You will learn that in order to disguise their aggressions against other Arab states on behalf of the US Empire, Saudi Arabia and its satellites use anti-Islam sectarianism.

The dictatorship on the Arabian Peninsula leads from within the region a war against anti-neo-colonial forces which reject the hegemony of the United States and Israel and implacably insist on Palestinian self-determination. It seeks to weaken and undermine these progressive forces by using religion to achieve the profane end of diverting resistance to the Western imperialist project into wars on “apostates” and “infidels.”

Israel is the worst neocolonial crime committed by the Western capitalist nations against the nations of the Middle East. You will learn the real, thoroughly democratic position by those Middle Eastern countries and forces that are in opposition to Israel.

And finally, you will learn to put the European holocaust into a larger perspective: 

The greatest holocaust of all was not the one carried out against Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany, though that genocide, accompanied by the systematic extermination of others, including Roma, communists and Slavs, was as obscene as any other. If we have to attach priority to genocide, as is done in capitalizing the anti-Jewish holocaust as the Holocaust, then a much larger genocide, of which there is little discussion if even acknowledgement, has a more compelling claim to this grim mantle—the holocaust of the indigenous people of the Americas. In terms of the number of human beings exterminated, the American Holocaust is perhaps the greatest crime of the European colonial tradition. 

I find two interpretations of Gowans that I differ with in this essay. First, he fails to connect colonialism with capitalism. One would think that colonialism was only a racist disease that infected Europeans, instead of an inevitable desire by capitalists of any nation to expand their opportunities throughout the world in order to gain access to raw materials and cheap labor. The fact that capitalism first appeared in Europe is only an accident of historical forces.

Second, I totally disagree with his interpretation of the Western hostile attitudes toward Hitler and the Nazis. Although I don't have time to develop my argument here, my position is that Hitler and all fascists were created by Western capitalists both as a defense against socialist/communist forces within their own countries and to prepare particularly Germany to attack and destroy the Soviet Union, a nation that rejected capitalism and tried to establish the first workers state. The hostility often expressed by Western leaders is a psychological defense against this very embarrassing reality.

The social crisis and the US elections

Click here to access article by Barry Grey from World Socialist Web Site.'

Grey first explains the real employment numbers behind the fake numbers that the Obama administration is celebrating followed by the fakery of the US elections. Deception is the prime method of any ruling class to maintain power and wealth, and the existing capitalist class in the US is demonstrating their mastery of this skill.

Hillary Clinton Lies About Being Lied About On Fossil Fuel Connections

Click here to access article by Dan Wright from Shadowproof.

It seems to me that the ability to lie is a prime qualification for assuming the presidential office of the US Empire, and Hillary demonstrates once again that she is well qualified. She seems to be sponsored by the richest and most powerful segments of the Empire including Zionists, so how can she lose the well managed elections?

In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA

Click here to access article by Nabih Bulos , W.J. Hennigan and Brian Bennett from the LA Times.

This corporate newspaper tries hard to explain that it is too complicated to prevent various groups that the US funds from battling each other in Syria.

“This is a complicated, multi-sided war where our options are severely limited,” said a U.S. official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “We know we need a partner on the ground. We can't defeat ISIL without that part of the equation, so we keep trying to forge those relationships.”

It's clear from this and other sources that the CIA is funding terrorist groups to militarily weaken the Syrian government, whereas the Pentagon is supporting the Kurdish forces to accomplish "Plan B" to break up Syria. Also this article makes clear that the CIA is operating from Turkey to furnish weapons to their terrorist armies which, according to other sources (see this and this, often give them to ISIS (ISIL). The resulting chaos in Syria seems to me to be a deliberate policy of the Empire of Chaos.  

Left unasked is the 800 pound gorilla question: what justification does the US, its NATO ally Turkey, its medieval allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and its fortress colony of Israel have to attempt to destabilize the Syrian government?

Capital and wage-labor

Click here to access article by economist David Ruccio from his blog Occasional Links & Commentary. 

Capitalism is an economic system in which most people receive a wage or salary working in corporations for a small number of people who run those corporations and appropriate the resulting surplus in the form of profits.

That’s not a definition you’ll find in mainstream economics textbooks or most political debates these days. But it does capture what is distinctive about capitalism compared to other economic systems.

Increase in top 1% income share greatest in the U.S.

Click here if you wish to directly access this graph posted by the editor of Real-World Economics Review Blog. Note that the graph does not reflect income from capital gains.

The US Treasury's 'Silver Bullet' Falls Short

Click here to access article by Alastair Crooke from Conflicts Forum. 

Crooke sees that the overuse of economic sanction by Empire directors may be accelerating a response in kind from Russia, China, and other nations.

He begins this essay by arguing that, due to the popularity of economic sanctions in US political circles, the US is not in fact withdrawing sanctions on Iran to comply with last year's deal with Iran (JCPOA). He then widens this focus to show that nations which are not under the control of the US Empire (mainly the BRICS) are beginning to fight back against the application of economic warfare by building alternative financial institutions and economic retaliatory weapons.

Fueling Fascism: The Secret History of How Texaco Supplied Oil to Fascists in Spain

Click here if you wish to access the transcript of the 13:20m interview with author, journalist, and lecturer Adam Hochschild from Democracy Now!.

It is very important to realize that Texaco's history of supporting fascist powers in the Spanish Civil War, which extended into WWII, is only one illustration of a number of such corporations that supported fascism. (IT&T, General Motors, Ford are among many others that I immediately recall.) It is very important to obtain a meaningful understanding of this devastating war to see it as a dress rehearsal for WWII. This history has been subject to gross distortions by capitalist historians in an effort to portray it as a kind of folklore for their subjects--ordinary workers and their families--as a contest between us "good guys", the "democratic" powers, against the fascist "bad guys".

The history is much too complicated to review for this blog. Thus I recommend that you read Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell and The Spanish Civil War by Paul Preston among others. The important factors in the war were the following: the Soviet revolution of 1917, the anarcho-communists that dominated the defense of the Spanish Republic, and the natural fascist proclivities (see this, this, and this) of the capitalist ruling classes of Western countries.

Governments Admit that Much of Modern History Has Been Manipulated By False Flag Attacks

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog.

Pay attention, class! I know that you have always been taught to obey and believe the authority figures in government, schools, corporate media, and other institutions. But since you have all grown into adults, it's time to relieve yourself of their fairy tales because it is urgent that you know the truth if you are to protect yourselves from being misused and abused by powerful people for their benefit rather than yours. 

Today's lesson is about false flags. False flag events have been used by ruling classes throughout history to start wars, establish restrictions on civil rights, to destabilize countries, to engage in regime change, and to justify other hostile actions against societies, both foreign and domestic. 

Ruling classes in control of governments are really little more than highly organized gangs that often engage in many kinds of criminal activities, and they do this by using deceptions to fool ordinary people so that people like yourselves can be enlisted to help them in their various schemes.  The existing ruling class are capitalists who are especially attracted to criminal activities that will increase their power over you and others so that they can steal resources and part of the wealth that you create and turn them into profits for themselves. 

Today's assignment is to read this article and to learn the history of ruling classes and how they have used this method of false flag events as one form of deception to increase their dominance over their own societies as well as gaining control over people in foreign lands to gain control of their wealth and power.

How The U.S. Continues To Arm al-Qaeda

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

Bernhard has found two very credible pieces of evidence to support the headline.

Could an economic collapse be in our near future?

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

Dolack features some recent research by climate scientists that dovetail astonishingly well with the forecasts contained in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth which received much criticism at the time even from people on the left.

While one climate scientist referred vaguely to "powerful societal forces" as inhibiting serious solutions to the climate crisis, Dolack becomes much more clarifyingly specific:

...those “powerful societal forces” [are] the biggest industrialists and financiers in the world capitalist system. As long as we have an economic system that allows private capital to accumulate without limit on a finite planet, and externalize the costs, in a system that requires endless growth, there is no real prospect of making the drastic changes necessary to head off a very painful future.

Just because a study was conducted decades in the past does not mean we can’t learn from it. If we reach still further back in time, Rosa Luxemburg’s words haunt us still: Socialism or barbarism.

Obama of Arabia

Click here to access article by Kristen Breitweiser and other 9/11 widows Patty Casazza, Monica Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg, and Lorie Van Auken also sign their name to this blog which is posted on Huffington Post.

Breiweiser expresses the bewilderment experienced by so many 9/11 victims about their government's opposition to their desire for a complete inquiry to one of the most infamous crimes committed against citizens of this country. There is already considerable evidence that Saudi Arabian authorities (along with others) have sponsored terrorist groups, but yet our government acts as if they were our best friends. After expressing her bewilderment in the form of many questions, she finally offers an explanation. 

The problem I have with her explanation is that it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't target the underlying reason for the government's disloyal conduct or, one could justifiably say, their treasonous conduct. By omitting these fundamental reasons, a solution will never by effected. The fundamental reasons, which her more superficial reasons point to, are related to class rule. 

The ruling capitalist class in this country are in collusion with the ruling medieval class of Saudi Arabia to accumulate power and wealth. They are very much like a criminal gang that collaborates with another criminal gang to commit bigger crimes. The author and the rest of the 9/11 families apparently still believe all the democratic mythology that is so pervasively spread throughout every institution of our nation. Until this misty veil of deceptions is removed and class rule is ended, we will continue to experience more bewildering incidents like 9/11.

Kerry’s Plan at Balkanising Syria: Balkanising Syria is Not Plan B, it's Plan A

Click here to access article by Maram Susli also known as “Syrian Girl” from New Eastern Outlook.

Last month, US secretary of State John Kerry called for Syria to be partitioned saying it was “Plan B” if negotiations fail.  But in reality this was always plan A. Plans to balkanize Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern states were laid out by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a 2006 trip to Tel Aviv. It was part of the so called “Project For a New Middle East”. This was a carbon copy of the Odid Yinon plan drawn up by Israel in 1982. The plan outlined the way in which Middle Eastern countries could be balkanized along sectarian lines. This would result in the creation of several weak landlocked micro-states that would be in perpetual war with each other and never united enough to resist Israeli expansionism. [my link]

The motive for the attacks in Paris and Brussels

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from Voltaire Network. 

I normally do not post articles with so much speculative analysis that is based mostly on logic, but I am making an exception with this piece because Meyssan's speculations are so logical. They would explain a lot of mysterious happenings such as both the Russian and US support of the Syrian Kurds (for different reasons), Erdogan's seemly erratic actions, as well as the bombing incidents in Europe.

If true, his speculations would offer an excellent illustration of how various national elites commit monstrous crimes to further their interests of power and wealth. Such ruling class crimes (see also my commentary for "Obama of Arabia") have frequently occurred during the past 10 thousand years and will continue until we rid ourselves of the scourge of class rule, or until we finally kill each other in a nuclear conflagration and/or destroy the Earth's habitat that is capable of supporting human life. 

Are we, the 99.9% of the world's population, going to sit idly by watching ruling classes commit one terrible crime after another, or are we going to be activists fighting for our very survival by ending class rule? Yes, it is risky business to oppose ruling classes. They can really kill you or members of your family or make your family's life miserable. (I was threatened with being run off the road one late night and then followed to my home--it was clearly a death threat.) But think of the above alternatives if we remain passive. We can reduce the individual risks of revolution and vastly increase our power by organizing our opposition and being informed. 

What does the Brazilian crisis teach us?

Click here to access article by Olmedo Beluche from Workers World. 

This Panamanian sociologist and political activist gives us what appears to be the real scoop on what is happening in Brazil with the right-wing attacks on the Rousseff government and the PT party. I think it is an excellent illustration of the vulnerability of left-wing governments to opposition organized by ruling capitalist classes. This is also happening in Venezuela and Argentina.

I agree with the author's conclusion:

The Latin American experience in general and the Brazilian in particular show that the only way to save progressive political processes from the attacks of the right wing and imperialism is not by trying to negotiate and give in to their demands, but by convening popular mobilization and taking more radical socialist measures.

(You might also be interested in what is happening to counter the right-wing resurgence in other countries of South America covered in this piece entitled "Latin America Briefs".)

Surviving on the Battlefield in the Information War [a must-read]

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

The truth is hard to arrive at, not only because people intentionally seek to fool others, but because often, many unintentionally fool themselves. Reality can be unpleasant. Watching a nation be destroyed can be heartbreaking and the desire to insulate oneself from the pain through cognitive dissonance can be overwhelming. However, one of the greatest maxims in human conflict is to truly know yourself and know your enemy. Truth isn't just a matter of virtue, it is a factor that will make the difference between victory and defeat.

If victory over the forces of greed and hegemony is truly our goal, then we must face the facts no matter how unpleasant. Our failure to do so will cost us everything - and those driven by greed and hegemony know. That is why they have invested so much in clouding reality and obfuscating the truth. We must invest more in seeing through this clouded reality, and discover the truth, no matter how unpleasant.

It is clear to me that Cartalucci is one of the world's top truth-seekers. In this article he shares with us how we too can become a more proficient truth-seeker, and why it is so important in our struggle to create social justice in the capitalist class dominated societies that exist today. In our present era of capitalist rule, lying in addition to weaponry has become very advanced. We must be prepared to fight their lies with the truth, and Cartalucci gives us some important advice on how to do this.

Class oppressors must always lie as another means of maintaining their dominance.  If we are to survive as humans, we simply must end the practice of class-structured societies that have existed for the last 2% of human history. If we fail to accomplish this and fail to learn how to live in peace with each other and sustainably with nature--because we are a (very small) part of nature--we humans will surely disappear from Mother-Earth.

How Billionaires Use Non-Profits to Bypass Governments and Force Their Agendas on Humanity

Click here to access article by Sarah Lazare from AlterNet. 

As wealth becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the billionaire class is increasingly turning to foundations and non-profits to enact the change they would like to see in the world. Amid the rise of philanthrocapitalism, growing numbers of critics are raising serious questions about whether this outsized influence is doing more harm than good.

Of course it's doing much more harm than good! Billionaires only do good when it is in their interest to "do good". Unless you believe what is good for billionaires is good for us ordinary people, then you must conclude that their "do-gooding" is really doing good for themselves. Surely Lazare hasn't forgotten the capitalist credo (as expressed by Margaret Thatcher) which says:

...there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. .... It's our duty to look after ourselves....

NGOs (non-profit organizations in foreign countries are typically referred to as "NGOs or non-governmental organizations) have been used abroad to organize movements to destabilize and change the regimes of countries that the Empire doesn't like (think of all the "color revolutions" or Ukraine), whereas in this country the capitalist directorate uses them to lobby Congress and to attack targets that get in the way of their interests by using litigation. For an example of the latter, see this. Foundations are often used to filter money through to media that promote their interests or to corrupt alternative media. Regarding the latter, read this.

Trump and Clinton: Censoring the Unpalatable

Click here to access article by John Pilger from CounterPunch. (Note: With this post I am departing from my usual practice of posting articles from their original websites. This is because the post on CounterPunch is much more readable than Pilger's website.)

A virulent if familiar censorship is about to descend on the US election campaign. As the cartoon brute, Donald Trump, seems almost certain to win the Republican Party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton is being ordained both as the “women’s candidate” and the champion of American liberalism in its heroic struggle with the Evil One.

This is drivel, of course; Hillary Clinton leaves a trail of blood and suffering around the world and a clear record of exploitation and greed in her own country. To say so, however, is becoming intolerable in the land of free speech.

The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama should have alerted even the most dewy-eyed. 

Yes, it should have, but the naive American public always falls for these lies every presidential election, and that is why our masters keep using the same deceptions--it works every time.

He then goes on to disclose his censorship experience with the liberal TruthOut's website. Following Cartalucci's advice, I took about 30 minutes this morning to ascertain the funding of TruthOut, and I found that their top contributors have donated substantial amounts to Democratic Party candidates. (See this on page 28 [corrected on 3/30/2016], this, and this.)

The “editorial committee” clearly wanted me to water down my argument that Clinton represented a proven extreme danger to the world.  Like all censorship, this was unacceptable. Maya Schenwar, who runs Truthout, wrote to me that my unwillingness to submit my work to a “process of revision” meant she had to take it off her “publication docket”.  Such is the gatekeeper’s way with words. 

Coke or Pepsi? The Choice Between Pro-War Candidates

Click here to access article by Cindy Sheehan from TeleSur. 

This anti-establishment activist offers her views on the elections based on personal experience participating in them. She reaches this conclusion:

...the U.S. is obviously not a democracy, but a corporatocracy and only grassroots social and political activism that stands firmly, confidently, courageously, and honestly outside of the system can defeat it. Trying to defeat the Empire from the inside is like trying to put out a forest fire by pouring gasoline on it. 

Workers Control in Venezuela and Beyond: An Interview with Dario Azzelini

Click here to access article posted on LeftEast by Marko Miletic about his interview with Azzelini. The article includes a 34:21m film made by Azzelini and an associate that takes us into one worker-run factory in Italy to learn how workers manage their enterprise.

With the daily neoliberal assaults on workers all over the world, we sometimes forget about the operations of enterprises that workers have created in narrow spaces of the capitalist world. Then, too, these receive very little publicity probably because the workers are too busy and the capitalist world does not want us to know about their activities. The participants in this interview are two activists that are very much involved with worker enterprises, and they share their valuable experience and insightful ideas with us. 

The interviewer Marko Miletic

Marko Miletić is a political activist from Belgrade, Serbia. He is member of Kontekst collective, and Social Center October. He is member of editorial board of portal masina.rs.

Dario Azzelini

Dario Azzellini is assistant professor for sociology at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, writer and documentary director. He holds a PhD in political science and a PhD in sociology. His research and writing focuses on democracy, social movements, self-management, popular power, migration and racism. Azzellini published several books, essays and documentaries.

Dario Azzelini is a theoretician and political activist splitting time between Berlin and Caracas. He recently stayed in Belgrade to participate in the conference “Let’s bring socialism back into the game“. That gave us an opportunity to talk about different topics he addresses in his work – ranging from the question of Maduro’s election loss, the interrelation of art and politics, to cases of recuperations of workers’ factories throughout Europe.


 

The Paradox of Individualism Part 2

Click here to access article by Dennis Loo from his blog.

Loo attacks the a fundamental credo of individualism that supports capitalist ideology well illustrated in Margaret Thatcher's infamous quote:

...there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. .... It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. [She probably added the last clause because she was worried about what her neighbors might think.]

There's a 'Special Place in Hell' for Madeleine Albright [and Hillary]

Click here to access article by Kurt Nimmo from InfoWars.

There are plenty of US war criminals; but to the people who proclaim that it would be wonderful to have a woman as president, I offer this piece to show that war-mongering comes with no sexual identity. Being a person who is inclined to war-mongering and illegally acquiring a fortune, Hillary Clinton is another war criminal type who would be a perfect candidate to serve the Empire's ruling predatory class of capitalists. If you're not convinced after reading this article, then read this, this, and this. 

Many of my fellow Americans are glued to their TV sets and fascinated by what they think are "democratic" election results and getting caught up in all the drama that corporate media can muster. Hillary, of course, will "win" the presidency simply because she was selected as a woman candidate who would appeal to women and others who wish to deny their anti-women prejudices.

They performed the same ruse in 2008 by giving Americans the chance to prove their non-racism by voting for Barack Obama. Because he was raised mostly by his white banker grandmother and educated at elite schools, he was thoroughly indoctrinated in capitalist values and became a perfect puppet president to serve the ruling capitalist class. This illustrates how clever our ruling class directorate are with their applications of inverted racism and sexism to manipulate the social identity politics of Americans. (Class politics is taboo in the US. Should one be foolish enough to try to engage most of them in a class analysis of any given issue, they will look at you like you were from another planet.)

What most naive Americans fail to understand is that these elections are all smoke and mirrors designed to hide the fact that it really doesn't matter who becomes president because that person will either serve the ruling class directorate or they will be removed from office one way or another. However the directorate wants someone in office who they know will perform their public relations duties well and follow their orders. They long ago decided that Hillary was that person and have been grooming her for that job ever since.

Capitalism's Crisis and the Betrayal of A Generation

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

No other cohort has felt the wrath of capitalist crisis more than youth in the US. Finance capital has leveled over a trillion dollars of debt on the shoulders of students. The US has the highest rate of child poverty in capitalist countries. Youth joblessness stands at 10.5 percent nationally. This number doubles for Black and Latino youth in the US. The jobs that do exist are in low-wage sectors. The stranglehold of finance capital over housing, education, and healthcare has created a perfect storm where people under thirty in the US are now poorer than those who have retired.

It should come as no surprise, then, that young people in the US see themselves as working class rather than the often trumpeted term "middle class."

Brussels attacks: New European reality, old tired response

Click here to access article by Danielle Ryan by Global Independent Analytics. 

There is no justification for the violence we saw in Brussels and Paris. There will be no justification for it when it hits the next European city — and it will. Equally, there is no justification for the violence that Western nations led into hell by Washington have inflicted on other nations. It’s our inability to see that which lies at the root of the problem.

The EU must stay united. NATO must be expanded. Russia must be contained. Regime change is the only option for *insert country of choice*. Just keep playing those phrases on repeat until all ability to question or think for yourself is truly drained.

They want you to cry, change your profile picture to a Belgian flag, allow them to maintain the status quo and then act surprised when it happens again.

It’s well past time to stop letting them.

Exposed: Plans to Balkanise #Syria

Click here if you wish to access the 14:21m video directly from YouTube. 

I think SyrianGirl and the Syrian soldier she interviews place too much emphasis on nationalism and the sanctity of the state concept by attacking the federalism that is advocated by Syrian Kurds. On the other hand, the Empire and its allies like to use religious sectarianism to break up states to make them weaker and more easily dominated. Michael Jansen also sees federalism as simply a ploy backed by the Empire to divide and conquer regions of the world. 

History reveals that states have been created on the ruins of the old feudal system when kingdoms were established through violence after the Roman Empire disintegrated. The capitalist class took over control of these regions which were integrated into states that we see today. Imperialist capitalists have also used the divide and conquer strategy in many parts of the world to establish new states, particularly in the Middle East, to break up nations that posed threats to their control or to their access to resources. Thus states can be regarded as a creation of the capitalist class. It is interesting that now under neoliberalism that the US-led Empire is trying to reduce the power of all states in favor of the transnational rule of the Empire.

I think there is another position of federalization that can be argued as a progressive development: the breakup of states on the basis of natural bio-regions. Also there are various degrees of federation that can be used to decentralize power and to promote more grassroots participation in decision-making which is what the Syrian Kurds have been thinking based on the influence by progressive thinkers like the American Murray Bookchin and Kurdish Abdullah Öcalan and the concepts related to Libertarian Municipalism (see this, this, and this). SyrianGirl, Jansen, and others simply don't understand some of the progressive ideas of the Syrian Kurds. But it may also be true that the Kurds don't understand that they are being deliberately led by US agents down the path of national independence for a Kurdish state which would facilitate the breakup of Syria, the Empire's "Plan B".

On the other hand, I think it is a bit dangerous to experiment with such ideas of decentralization while the Empire goes about breaking up states for their purposes of world domination. It is the Empire, and particularly the US that needs broken up, and this likely should be accomplished first before other states do it.

I perused a Kurdish website this morning and found more evidence that the US is supporting and courting the Kurdish desire for greater independence. The fact that this article was re-posted to a Kurdish website suggests some naivete among the Kurds. To agents of the US Empire this, of course, means balkanization of Syria . And I just found a post that indicates that the Syrian Kurds have declared themselves to be a "federation". But the details of what they mean by federation are missing.

A Crisis With No Capitalist Way Out

Click here to access this book review by Ron Jacobs from CounterPunch.

Jacobs reviews a new book by John Smith (I wonder if this is a real name or a pseudonym) entitled Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century.

The world is in crisis.  Capitalism, currently the only economic system in existence, is the cause of this crisis.  It is a crisis that impoverishes millions more every year while enhancing the wealth of the rarefied few who conspire with politicians to make it so.  It is a crisis that manifests itself in endless and meaningless wars.  It is a crisis that dismantles schools, hospitals, roads, and other infrastructure in the name of private profit.  Most ominously, it is a crisis which diminishes the health of the earth’s ecosystem, undoing an already fragile environment in order to squeeze meaningless dollars from that which gives all earthly species life.

This is the premise of John Smith’s newly-published work....

The "Islamophobia" Industry Feeds War Abroad, Grows Police State at Home [a must-read article]

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from Land Destroyer Report. (A "best post")

Cartalucci scores again with an excellent, cutting edge, well-documented essay that offers prime fodder for all people who want to understand the realities behind the facade of Empire policies and actions. What impressed me the most is that much of the management of this facade is exposed. This is well documented in the paper entitled "Conspiracy Theories" which I downloaded (for free) and printed. I have personally witness in my six and half years of blogging the phenomenon that Cartalucci refers to in the following passage:

It has been a stated matter of US policy, best articulated in former-US Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein's "Conspiracy Theories" paper, to infiltrate and redirect the alternative media, who even years ago, had already begun to significantly undermine US spheres of influence within global information space.

Called "cognitive infiltration," the idea was to infiltrate the alternative media with messages not directly contradicting the truth, but contradicting it enough to slowly bring readers, viewers, and listeners back into government controlled narratives.

I have noticed in my blogging that alternative websites that I earlier posted articles from have gradually over time become much tamer in their exposure of mainstream lies, much more limited in how far they will go to contest views broadcast by corporate media, and an insidious alignment with mainstream views. This I have not only noticed with regard to politically oriented websites and blogs, but also environmentally oriented sites. 

It is my opinion that most of this is done through the corrosive use of money to seduce people into compromising their views.  This use of money to subvert genuine alternative media and their bloggers, who are constantly begging for financial support, has been particularly effective in a capitalist culture that has always firmly supported individualistic values. 

In the past I had hoped for much more cooperative, organized efforts among alternative sites in support of each other, and by doing so grow stronger and much more effective. Instead they seem to see themselves in competition over the scarce money that is available from donors. With a propaganda-managed mainstream press and a contaminated alternative media, there is little chance of overcoming the widespread information that is leading the US public to a nuclear conflagration in the near future, and to a dramatic destabilization of our climate in the more distant future.

Kerry’s Warped Focus Betrays US Syria Game

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation.

With the US having been shown up as engaging in fakery by the Russians since the nearly one and one half year of US's war against ISIS, the Empire coalition of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel continue to thwart real peace efforts in Syria while making noises and gestures to the contrary. What efforts the US is directly engaging in appears to be contributing to their "Plan B" of dismembering Syria by backing the Syrian Kurds and establishing military bases in their region. 

Meanwhile back at the American ranch, corporate and government media portray Americans as heroic guys fighting single-handedly against the outlaws of ISIS as if Russia, Syrians, Iran, and Hezbollah had nothing to do with the diminishing power of ISIS. I am convinced that if these media simultaneously broadcast "news" for a month that the moon is made of green cheese, half of the American population would believe it. (Sorry, I'm feeling a bit cynical this morning.)

Success in business secrets

by cartoonist Carol Simpson.

BRICS Under Attack: Soft Coup in Brazil, US Proxies Move Against ANC in South Africa

Click here if you wish to access the introduction and video discussion directly from YouTube.

My preference for posts is not audio presentations but posted writings in which links can be provided to evidence to back up major points of more independent observers and analysts. However audio transmission is becoming more popular with people on the go who use various small computer devices to listen to such productions. As I've argued before, no one is infallible in interpreting information and observations, but there are some who consistently support the values of social justice and can be relied upon to make their best efforts to present accurate factual evidence and well-balanced analysis. One such person, I believe, is Eric Draitser.

Eric Draitser of http://StopImperialism.org appears on CPR Sunday with broadcaster Don DeBar to discuss the Empire's moves to undermine BRICS. Draitser provides detailed analysis of the individuals and groups behind the protest movement in Brazil, noting that powerful right wing, neoliberal forces are bankrolling the movement to remove the democratically elected left wing government of Dilma Rousseff and the Workers' Party. He also discusses the nature of the protests in South Africa and the powerful players co-opting the movement in the interests of the Empire. Finally, the conversation touches on potential outcomes of this clear offensive by Wall Street and the US establishment, and potential counter-measures by BRICS nations. All this and more in this wide-ranging discussion.

If you do not have time to listen to the entire 55 minute discussion, I especially recommend the first 32 minutes when he discusses what is happening in Brazil and South Africa in particular and the BRICS countries in general. Then for some of his comments that contrast US neoliberal policies with that of China's "win-win" investment policies, I recommend listening from 43:00m to 47:15m.

Brazil’s Revolution Starting to Reveal its True Colors

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from RT.

This time the independent Brazilian journalist finds that regime change is happening in his own country, and offers his observations about what is occurring. It seems that the very black pot is calling the more moderately blackened kettle black.

“Justice” in Brazil is now totally politicized. And Car Wash’s mandate is now revealed to clearly consist in the outright criminalization of absolutely anything related to the coalition governments led by the Workers’ Party since the beginning of the first Lula term in 2003.

Car Wash is not about the cleansing of corruption in Brazilian politics; if that really was the target, top opposition politicians would be under investigation, and many behind bars already.

Unlike Draitser who sees the regime changes, and attempts at regime, toward the right in South America as a part of a contest between nations largely ruled by capitalist classes loyal to the US Empire on one side, and on the other, a mixed model of government: capitalist elements combined with more independent nationalist elements that characterize the governments of the BRICS countries, especially the governments of China (under the rule of the Communist Party) and Russia, Escobar sees this as more of a Brazilian phenomenon. (Sorry for the long, convoluted sentence.)

Call it white coup. Call it regime change. Call it the Brazilian color revolution. Without NATO. Without “humanitarian”imperialism. Without blood and zillions of US dollars lost, like in Iraq, Libya or Syria. So “clean”. So “lawful”. How come Empire of Chaos’s theoreticians never thought about this before?

“Humanitarian” imperialism is so old Hillary; at least the Masters of the Universe will have a new template to apply all over the developing world. Happy – regime change – days are here again.

And forget about reading any of this on Western corporate media.

Operation Condor Never Ended: Assassinations and Coup Plots Continue Across Latin America

Click here to access article by Hugo Turner from Global Research. 

The author reminds us that the battle against the Empire continues throughout Latin America with the right-wing loyalists to the Empire winning some recent battles in Argentina, Venezuela, and looking ominous in Brazil.

Latin America is an often forgotten theater in World War 4 America’s war on the planet that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In many ways World War 4 is merely a continuation of World War 3 aka the Cold War and nowhere is this more apparent then in Latin America. Wherever the US maintained it’s control it carried on with the horrific dirty war assassinating anyone who dares to dream and work for a better world. The recent murder of COPINH co-founder Berta Caceres has briefly drawn attention to this never ending wave of murder and assassinations. [my link]

TTIP: "Regulatory Cooperation" a threat to democracy

Click here to access article from Corporate Europe Observatory.

The article points to another threat (in addition to the Investor-state dispute settlement sections in multi-lateral trade treaties) to what passes as democracy in capitalist countries: "regulatory cooperation" clauses in these trade treaties.

The new EU position paper on “regulatory cooperation and good regulatory
practices" offers an insight into how negotiators hope to avoid future "nontariff"
and "technical barriers" to trade. While it is unclear precisely what form
such “cooperation” would take, we understand that the proposals would entail
several changes to EU and US law-making processes.

Report: War on Drugs Meant to Imprison Blacks, Leftists

Click here to access article and 4:32m video from TeleSur.

John Ehrlichman, chief of domestic policy for disgraced former U.S. President Richard Nixon, admitted that the war against drugs was implemented to criminalize Nixon's enemies: Black people and anti-war hippies.
       
Dan Baum of Harper's Magazine released a report Tuesday that says Ehrlichman admitted as much in a 1994 interview. [link supplied by blogger]

Many anti-war activists and African-Americans have known this for a long time, but it's great to hear it from the "horse's mouth". Like all other subjects most Americans still cling to the fairy tales as conveniently presented to them by corporate media.

Straight Talk Hate Talk

Click here to access article from Public Good Project.

This website follows up on a recent article, which exposed the use of non-profit organizations as front groups to attack tribal rights under long standing agreements with the federal government in order to pave the way for a coal terminal (in my county), with this article that gives more background information (mostly via links) on these attacks. 

As I remarked in the previous post, major economic interests are supporting this effort: Goldman-Sachs and Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett). Another non-profit front group that is playing a major role in this attack through the use of lawsuits and propaganda is mentioned in the article: the deceptively named "Northwest Jobs Alliance".

One link takes you to IC Magazine's (a Native American website) post entitled "Wise Use Terrorism: Craig Cole's Anti-Indian Campaign" which argues the following:

The Wall Street/Tea Party Convergence in the fossil fuel export war on the Salish Sea, using counterfeit front groups and political action committees, is a textbook example of Wise Use netwar (networked psychological warfare) exploiting organized racism. Gray ops (misleading propaganda) and black ops (counterfeit front groups) make it possible for Wise Use fossil fuel export developers to confuse mainstream media, and in conjunction with bribery through advertising, ensure that only the industrial point of view is represented in the corporate mainstream news. [my link]

Trickle-Down Economics

by cartoonist Gabe Crate?

Zero-Sum: The Savage Vision Driving a Terror-Ridden World

Click here to access article by Chris Floyd from his blog Empire Burlesque. 

In this essay the Floyd, an independent journalist, embarks on an ambitious quest to explain the continuing terrorist events in Western countries by examining what he regards as a "primitive" orientation of control and domination that has been adopted by so many ruling classes throughout history. Of course recorded history only dates back to about 10,000 years ago, or at most about 2% of human history. Thus little is known about the earlier 98% of human experience. 

Floyd later suggests that this "fiercely primitive worldview" is an "extremely limited worldview", however he doesn't develop the theme that there is another worldview that is characterized by "The idea of equal citizens working, living, and sharing together". Such a worldview is regarded as purely a fantasy by especially those who dominate the world today. 

This is a fundamental issue regarding human nature. It seems obvious that human nature is highly plastic and can take many different forms for long periods of time. Many have argued that, although the latter is true, human nature is not infinitely plastic. Two such people who argue that this "fiercely primitive worldview" is not a fundamental part of human nature are Susan Rosenthal, a retired psychiatrist, and Noam Chomsky, a world famous linguist. Rosenthal's thoughts on this subject can be accessed in Chapter Five of her book Power and Powerlessness and  Chomsky's in an article entitled "Human Nature: Justice versus Power" which features a 1971 debate with Michel Foucault. Eric Fromm after WWII wrote many books featuring a similar concept of human nature. All these concepts suggest that human nature is incompatible with any kind of class rule.

Floyd focuses our attention on more contemporary and false notions of human nature, the most prominent of which is the capitalist ruling class's notion of extreme individualism where everyone is encouraged to believe that they are in competition with everyone else for control and domination. Such beliefs, of course, ultimately justify capitalist class rule.

...the dynamic of domination is key: since nothing exists outside this dynamic, since there is no other way, then one group MUST dominate the others. The idea of equal citizens working, living, and sharing together is a fantasy in this worldview. If blacks or immigrants or women or gays are perceived to have gained a small share in the national life, then that share must have been “taken” from the dominant group. And since, in this view, domination is the goal of all groups, since it is the organizing principle of human life, then those upstart groups are not just seeking a fair share of society’s bounty and freedoms and opportunities; no, they are actually aiming to subjugate the dominant group. In this extremely limited worldview, life is always a zero-sum game. To give someone else more opportunity means less for yourself, and your kind. The freer someone else is, the less free you are. There is only so much to go around. You will find more sophisticated and empathetic worldviews on grade-school playgrounds, or in wolf packs.

And so we come to the foreign policies of Western nations today.

US is Offering False Hope to Syria's Kurds

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

I've been amazed at the support of the Syrian Kurds by both Russia and the United States with Turkey, a NATO ally of the latter, on the other side attacking the Kurds both in Syria and Iraq. The US has even gone to the extent of establishing an airbase in the Kurdish area of Syria which, of course, is illegal without the Syrian government's consent. I've wondered how the US rationalizes their support of Syrian Kurds to the Erdogan government in Turkey. And what about the Syrian Kurds who espouse a political ideology that is incompatible with the ideology of the Empire? Thus I've been waiting for independent experts on the Middle East to explain all these mysteries to me. Gunnar is the first I've discovered to attempt to do this, and he does shed a convincing light on some of these mysteries.

It is well known that the US's plan B, although usually regarded as a secondary solution to the destruction of ISIS and related terrorist armies, has been widely supported among US think tanks and government offices. Plan B also is very characteristic of a more general hegemonic orientation of the Empire whose British roots have long practiced this type of divide and rule strategy.

As the British did before them, the United States is an expert in Balkanizing regions, and nations within regions. What is touted as "revolution," "freedom" and "independence" often ends up becoming decades of instability, internal conflict and dependence on the US who had sold the idea of nation-making in the first place.

And while the US promises the Kurds a utopian future state, they have simultaneously promised overlapping spheres within the region to other allies, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and even Israel. The diabolical brilliance of this arrangement allows the US to create future conflicts, divisions and weakness among all players in the region, between friends and foes alike, ensuring it alone maintains hegemony over a collection of infighting subordinates.

In my mind this begs questions about the political thinking of the Syrian Kurds whose political ideology holds so much promise. Are they naive about this strategy and will end up like so many other balkanized states dependent on the Empire or do they think that they can use the US for the purposes of protecting them from the terrorist armies (sponsored directly and indirectly by the Empire) and Turkey, and then kick them out when those purposes are accomplished? Doesn't such a strategy cause considerable discord with US allies in Saudi Arabia and Turkey? Such questions remain to be answered.

In any case what is coming into glaring focus is the astounding duplicitous nature of the Empire's role in the Syrian conflict and nearby areas. Of course duplicity has been in the nature of all imperial regimes throughout history, but Empire directors seem to have taken this to a whole new level. 

"Meanwhile back at the US ranch", the Empire's corporate media continue to manage all these discrepancies and contradictions with sufficient skill to keep my fellow Americans either totally misinformed or confused or both.

‘This is what happens when you get into bed with extremists’

Click here to access a 12:57 interview conducted by RT with the editor of Politics First Marcus Papadopoulos, commenting on the Brussels blasts.

I was aghast at his first comment (0:30m) about the terrorist attack in Brussels as "demonstrating the evil nature of Islamism", but after that he summarizes all the sponsorship and support of the Empire (US and NATO countries), its Mid-East medieval cronies, and Turkey given to terrorist armies that have tried to overturn the Syrian government. 

Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries

Click here to access article by Justin Gillis from the NY Times.

The nations of the world agreed years ago to try to limit global warming to a level they hoped would prove somewhat tolerable. But leading climate scientists warned on Tuesday that permitting a warming of that magnitude would actually be quite dangerous. [my emphasis]

The likely consequences would include killer storms stronger than any in modern times, the disintegration of large parts of the polar ice sheets, and a rise of the sea sufficient to begin drowning the world’s coastal cities before the end of this century, the scientists declared.

Human-driven carbon release rate unprecedented in past 66 million years

Click here to access article from (e) Science News.

This is a very well-written piece for the lay public.

"In studying one of the most dramatic episodes of global change since the dinosaurs, the researchers show that we are currently in uncharted territory in the rate carbon is being released into the atmosphere and oceans," said Candace Major, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research.

The findings suggest that humans [now] are responsible for releasing carbon about 10 times faster than during any time in the past 66 million years.

False Solutions: Pitfalls of Emissions Trading / Risks of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Geo-Engineering

Click here to access a 17:46 video and transcript of a panel discussion in English from Kontext (Germany).

I had difficulty playing the video on this site. You can also access it at this link, and from TNI (I used right click to operate video).

The emission trading scheme has failed as an instrument to curb global warming. The reason for the failure is that there has never been a global cap on carbon emissions. In the end loopholes have caused stagnating or even rising emissions, says Alice Bows-Larkin. Additionally problematic mega-dams have been pushed as green projects. To include forests and soils in the emission trading like it is done with the program REED+ in the Paris agreement would follow a “perverse logic”, says former chief climate negotiator of Bolivia Pablo Solón. Only those who reduce deforestation get carbon credits as a kind of reward. Troubling is also that scientists and politicians rely on carbon capture and storage and geo-engeneering to reduce our emissions in the future. Instead of following these kind of dangerous solutions politics should rather stop the pollution by reducing the extraction of oil, gas and coal in the first place.

US accelerating military encirclement of China

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

Symonds brings us up-to-date on the latest happenings in relation to the "pivot to Asia [China]" policy of the Obama administration.

The United States and the Philippines announced last Friday that five of the country’s military bases would be opened up to American forces under the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). The implementation of the Philippine basing arrangement is just one component of the accelerating US military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific region as part of the Pentagon’s encirclement and war preparations against China.

European Union-Turkey deal to expel refugees comes into force

Click here to access article by Jordan Shilton from World Socialist Web Site. 

The deal struck last Friday between the European Union’s 28 heads of government and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to facilitate the mass deportation of refugees arriving in Greece came into force on Sunday.

The agreement, negotiated at a special two-day summit with the authoritarian Turkish regime, aims to seal off Europe’s borders to the millions of desperate people fleeing war and social misery produced by a series of wars and military interventions led by the imperialist powers. It represents a flagrant violation of international law by effectively abolishing the right to asylum, leaving the refugees at the mercy of the Turkish government.

The Turkish government in collusion with Saudi Arabia and its satellites and the US Empire which includes the European Union and Israel are responsible for the catastrophe in Syria which has caused so many people to flee for their lives.

Facing Turkey, Europe chooses suicide

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from Voltaire Network. 

By signing an agreement with Turkey to slow the influx of refugees – which happens to be illegal in international law – the leaders of the European Union have taken a step further in their pact with the devil. A large part of the 3 billion Euros annually allotted to Ankara will serve to finance support for the jihadists, and as a result will increase the number of migrants who are fleeing the war.

This French intellectual covers a lot of ground to support his thesis as expressed in the headline. Although I have posted some of his articles on my website, others have not been posted because of what I considered to be inadequate translations and thus would not be well understood by Americans. I am posting this piece because Meyssan draws on his extensive body of work and other solid sources to portray the irrationality from a European perspective of not only the recent agreement regarding refugees but most of the policies of Europe's ruling class. 

However, must we conclude that European leaders are stupid as Meyssan seems to suggest in the headline? This pattern of rule which he documents suggests to me that European leaders, and the European ruling class that they represent, have been so thoroughly integrated into the US-led Empire that they are really serving the Empire and identify with its global hegemonic orientation. 

We see another excellent example of portraying European leaders as stupid in a briefer article entitled "Is Putin Weaponising Stupidity?" by Rob Slane from his blog TheBlogMire.

America’s Fake War on ISIS Grinds On

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

Unfortunately the link on which his essay is based regarding the hearing at the Senate Committee on Armed Services is no longer valid, however the author has demonstrated over a number of years that he is a very reliable source of information. He expresses his general observation of the hearings as follows:

What the hearing illustrated once again was that it is the US plowing the fields – turning nations into failed-states – and then sowing the seeds of perpetual chaos with heavily armed, well-funded, and well backed mercenary forces to transform entire regions of the world into divided, weak, and perpetually fighting, perpetually shifting conflict zones from which the West’s enemies can be removed, and regimes more to their liking can be installed.

In the one hour plus hearing, nothing resembling a tangible strategy for confronting and defeating ISIS was discussed.

Capitalist trade and its discontents

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

Economist Ruccio writes:

It doesn’t take a genius to understand that international trade under capitalism creates winners and losers. A few winners and lots of losers.

Generations of heterodox economists have demonstrated exactly that—that, both theoretically and empirically, capitalist trade can and often does have diverging class effects. Mainstream economists, however, persist in arguing exactly the opposite: everyone gains from trade.

History as Propaganda: Why the USSR Did Not ‘Win’ World War II (both parts 1 and 2)

Click here to access part 1 and and part 2 here, both by Michael Jabara Carley from Strategic Culture Foundation.

This Canadian professor tries to correct how history is taught in Western countries. I wish him well in his own Sisyphean task because the teaching of history for ordinary people has become little more than propaganda to insure the new generations manning the imperial armies do so with conviction. Now that Russia is once again appearing in the scopes of the Empire's many weapons, this anti-Russian propaganda campaign is going into high gear.

The title of this article is intended to be ironic because of course the Red Army did play the predominant role in destroying Nazi Germany during World War II. You would not know it, however, reading the western Mainstream Media (MSM), or watching television, or going to the cinema in the west where the Soviet role in the war has almost entirely disappeared.

If in the West the Red Army is largely absent from World War II, the Soviet Union’s responsibility for igniting the war is omnipresent.

In both parts he uses mostly the shorthand expression of naming countries in place of specifying capitalist ruling classes of those countries. This omission also allows him to make the most egregious omission of all. The prime reason why Western capitalist countries engaged in so much perfidy with regard to the Soviet Union and were so sympathetic toward the growing fascist menace in Europe was the crime of rejecting capitalism in the Soviet Revolution of 1917--the 800 pound gorilla in the room of the 20th century! This is as close as the professor comes to this most important fact:

During the interwar years, the Russophobia was mixed with Sovietophobia: it was a clash of two worlds between the West and the USSR, the Silent Conflict, Litvinov called it. 

A "clash of two worlds"? Such obfuscation of history results in a gross distortion of history! Gone are any references to the indisputable fact that around 13 capitalist nations invaded Russia immediately following their revolution and many of these nations also funded the White armies opposing the Bolsheviks. The viscerally hostile reaction by leading capitalist classes to the Soviet revolution colored so much of the history of the 20th century.

The actual WWII Soviet contribution to the defeat of fascism as described by the professor is accurate, but this glaring omission results in this distortion of history--this time apparently in service to the new capitalist ruling class in Russia which refuses to submit to the rule of the Empire capitalists. Or maybe in service to what has become fashionable among "leftists" in the West: promotion of a "multi-polar" capitalist world.

The Honorable Market Garland

Click here to access article by the creator of Habeas Quaestus blog.

She supplies more information (see this) about the new Supreme Court nominee.

With the nomination of Merrick Garland, the Obama administration and Democratic establishment have doubled down on upholding neoliberalism as the core of the party’s politics. The legal punditry must break free of the misleading categories that have long dominated our analysis, especially of the Supreme Court. Pro or anti-government; progressive or textualist; and activist or conservative all are false binaries and obfuscate the truth. Judge Garland in particular reveals a truth that the marginalized people of this country have known for centuries: the law is construed to fit the politics of the powerful.

The invention of capitalism

by Peter Chiykowski from his website Rock, Paper, Cynic.