The genius of the free market economy

by cartoonist Dan Wasserman.

Assange: Clinton is a cog for Goldman Sachs & the Saudis

Click here to access the transcript of a 24:53m interview conducted by Australian journalist John Pilger with Julian Assange, a founder of Wikileaks and a political refugee from Empire persecution, who has been trapped at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over four years. In the interview Assange draws on his vast knowledge of the intercepted emails to inform his insightful comments about the funding of ISIS, American deep state politics, and some details about his confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Drone: Robot Imperium

Click here to access article by Stephen Graham from Transnational Institute. 

This is a fairly lengthy read which takes you on a tour of the killing machines that US Empire agents use mostly in the Middle East and adjacent areas. Even our hopey-changey leader Obama has gotten in on some of the action. The author examines some of the details about what it is like for operators sitting in Nevada and other safe places to use these weapons, what the experience is for people living in such targeted areas, possible future uses, and speculation on the increasing use by activists in opposition to our capitalist masters.

Armed drones have created a top-down view of the world, in which military officials and politicians assert an ideology of inherent superiority over subjugated, racialised people — or even dehumanised non-people — far beneath the  drone's gaze.

“Our free press” as a clear and present danger (MUST-SEE VIDEO)

Click here if you wish to access the 109:39m video featuring three of four of my favorite media people directly from The Global Critical Media Literacy Project's website. This video of the panel discussion was posted by Prof. Nolan Higdon.

The 2016 Media Freedom Summit celebrated 40 years of Project Censored. The event also brought together independent journalists, media activists, professors, students, and members of the public to discuss the links between media power and political power, and to share effective strategies for advancing social justice by promoting media freedom and critical media literacy.

The round-table for the 2016 Media Freedom Summit took place at Sonoma State University on October 21, 2016. The speakers included Abby Martin (Empire Files) with Mnar Muhawesh (Mint Press News), David Talbot ( journalist, author and media entrepreneur), and Mark Crispin Miller (New York University)

Susan George on the Development of a Treaty on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations

Click here if you wish to access this 3:25m video featuring Susan George directly from the Transnational Institute talking about the Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clause that is always included in the new trade treaties.

Susan George joined an expert panel on the first day of a meeting of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council, tasked with developing a treaty on transnational corporations and human rights. She spoke with the Global Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power about the history of UN action on transnational corporations, the potential pitfalls of the current treaty negotiations, and the range of tax abuses, wage evasion, and investor protection weapons that transnational corporations can use.

Finance as warfare

Click here to access article by the editor (Edward Fullbrook) of Real-World Economic Review Blog.

In this article the author introduces us to a book by Michael Hudson entitled Finance as Warfare published by RWER. However, what is left out in this introduction is the fact that in this era of globalization, capitalists totally disregard borders (unlike the rest of us). That means that their own populations (mostly in the US and Britain) are put into debt and controlled by debt as well as foreign nations and their populations. So it's global class warfare not imperialism as is implied in the introduction; and I suspect according to my reading of Hudson's articles, that it is likewise treated in his book.

Wake Up Call

by British illustrator and animator Steve Cutts from his website.

Hillary's reckoning?

Click here if you wish to access this CrossTalk discussion from RT. 

Hillary Clinton and her never-ending scandals. The FBI’s decision to continue its investigation into her use of a private email server presents the troubling prospect of a protracted political crisis. Is winning the election now the least of her problems?

CrossTalking with Mark Crispin Miller, Don DeBar, and Bruce Fein.

Changing the Culture of Wall Street Requires Ending Continuity Government in Washington

Click here to access article by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from Wall Street on Parade.

It’s more than a coincidence that at a time when the two leading candidates for the highest office in the United States are considered untrustworthy by tens of millions of their fellow citizens, the industry that has perpetually attempted to stack the political deck in Washington has also lost the trust of a majority of Americans.

This feels to many like having Wall Street’s one percent at the rudder for the past two decades has finally steered the ship of state into a toxic sink hole that is devouring the credibility of the United States at home and abroad.

These watchdogs of the ever evolving corruption of government by the tiny ruling capitalist class don't realize the major significance of this growth of corruption. They are wildly underestimating what it would take to change the "culture of Wall Street" by ending "continuity government in Washington". (This last phrase is not to be confused with "Continuity of Government"--see this, this, and this.) 

The Martens are essentially describing the current rule of the capitalist class whose rule has evolved into what it is today. Although the DNA of capitalism was firmly installed by our "Founding Fathers", the gross symptoms of this barbarous system started appearing since the great fortunes were made by a relatively few people during the Gilded Age. This concentration of wealth easily translated into control of the American nation. Since then the capitalist class has consolidated their control over the nation with the Federal Reserve Act, the growing ownership and concentration of corporate media, and their installations of secret agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Only a well organized revolutionary movement can dislodge this tiny, but powerful class from power.

Pension funds fuel land grabs in Brazil

Click here if you wish to access article directly from Grain.

Around the world, farmers are losing their lands, often violently, to large companies and speculators who see farmland as a lucrative investment. But what are the complex mechanisms behind these processes? Could your pension fund be contributing to land grabbing in places like Brazil?

This animated video shows how a global farmland fund, managed by US financial giant TIAA-CREF, used a complex company structure to avoid restrictions on foreign investment in farmland in Brazil. It then acquired lands from a Brazilian businessman who has used violence and fraud to grab large areas of farmland from small farmers and indigenous peoples in the Brazilian states of Maranhão and Piauí. This video is intended to pressure pension funds to publicly disclose the names and locations of the farmlands they have acquired across the world and to stop speculating on farmland.

Struggles over land and resources are intensifying in Brazil, where 150 environmental activists have been murdered since 2012, many of whom were fighting to protect the lands of small farming communities. It is important for us to expose the actors and mechanisms behind this violence and say STOP to farmland speculation and land grabbing.

Some Fun Facts for a Dystopic Future

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

The author has taken quite a while to post new material on his blog, and this one portends a future that is the darkest of all of them. If you have a weak stomach for suck bleak facts--the author's "fun facts" are meant to be ironic--you should probably not read this. Instead, I advise you to turn on the boob-tube for escapist entertainment, or turn to your favorite hallucinatory drug of choice. If you have such a weak stomach and still bravely or recklessly decide to read it, I advise you to take some anti-depressant medication before reading it.

We’ve been fooling ourselves for a very long time about what is truly sustainable and will continue to do so as the system falls apart, geoengineering fixes are applied, interstellar space colonization fantasies are dreamed up, and wars are fought for what remains. Humans have constructed a reality incompatible with the well-being of the natural world and the stability of the biosphere, but we won’t be able to escape the rules of physics, chemistry, and biology. We’ve spent generations making the bed we’re going to be lying in, never realizing it’s also our death bed. Time is not on our side.

Most are not listening and our leaders are misleading, so it bears repeating: ‘The Oil Age’ made us all confident idiots with short attention spans.

As for myself, I read it and acknowledge the many truths that it reveals about the future of humans. Still, as long as there is any chance of survival, I will continue to attack the real culprit of our predicament: our relatively recent history of capitalist class rule that has so voraciously consumed fossil fuels to satisfy their addictions to wealth and power. And even if our future is doomed, I still want to attack this class which has so compulsively led us to our extinction.

Afghanistan: What has Fifteen Years of Occupation Achieved

Click here to access article by James ONeill from New Eastern Outlook.


In spite of the article's glaring weakness, the author, who is an Australian attorney, provides an excellent summary of the results of NATO's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and compares the realities of this conflict with the myths propagated by mainstream media. The glaring weakness: he doesn't provide a single link to any evidence that support a number of his factual allegations. I am posting this for those of you who have been following accurate alternative sources of information for at least since the 9/11 event and know from this experience that most, if not all, of his allegations are correct. 

Still, I would have been elated to find supporting links about the US use of their military bases to transfer opium to markets in the US, Europe, and elsewhere. I think that this is very likely correct because of the security and secrecy that such transfers would provide. I do know that the CIA was using their airline Air America to import illicit drugs into the US during the Vietnam War. And there is no doubt that the US has currently been experiencing an epidemic of heroin addiction in the US as widely reported in mainstream media, but the latter never ask questions about how opium is imported into the US.

The Million-Dollar Diamond Theft at the World Trade Center on 9/11

Click here to access article from 9/11 Blogger.

Over a million dollars' worth of diamonds and bonds were apparently stolen from an armored truck in the basement of the World Trade Center when the terrorist attacks took place on September 11, 2001, which suggests that someone--or some people--may have had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and exploited the chaos they knew the attacks would generate in order to commit their crime at a time when there was minimal risk of getting caught.

Furthermore, there was an attempt to remove an unusually large amount of gold from vaults in the basement of the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks, which indicates that other people may have known in advance about the attacks and, based on their foreknowledge, tried to get the gold out before it became buried in the rubble of the Twin Towers.

AT&T Developed Secret Program To Help U.S. Police Mine Client Phone Records

Click here to access article by Pratap Chatterjee from CorpWatch. 

Here we find another report on the government's police agencies, which serve the ruling capitalist class, doing an end-run around privacy statutes in the Constitution in order to access information about anyone who might pose problems for the capitalist government. The article explains how the AT&T arrangement works and other background information.

Police departments across the U.S. pay AT&T, the telecommunications giant, over one hundred thousand dollars a year for special access to telephone records of clients without first obtaining a warrant. The program is called 'Hemisphere' and the company required buyers to keep its existence secret. 

A Super Capitalist Predator: AT&T

by cartoonist Dave Granlund.

States of exclusion

Click here to access article by Phil Marfleet from Socialist Review (Britain).

Marfleet provides some enlightening answers to the following questions:

Why are borders so important to the modern state? Why do politicians and the media obsess about “border security”? What lies behind the politics of exclusion?

North Korea is an [sic] Pentagon Vassal State

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

I don't normally post articles by people who write endlessly about their speculations regarding world events, but this essay struck me as explaining a lot about the activities of North Korea under Kim Jong Un as serving US ruling class interests. Engdahl clearly states his thesis in the first paragraph, and then in the rest of the essay assembles evidence and arguments in support of the thesis. It appears that his thesis was inspired by a memory of a conversation he had with a person well connected with the US's deep state at one of the Empire's gathering of influential people during the late 1990s. 

This is conspiracy theorizing at its best in a never-ending and urgent effort to uncover the rationale for the Empire's actions which always lie hidden below a thick layer of deceptive propaganda and secrecy. These latter characteristics are imperative in any bourgeois democracy (the capitalist ruling class's fake version of real democracy) simply because the wealth and power interests of any capitalist ruling class corresponds poorly with the interests of the vast majority of ordinary people.

Geo-engineering unlikely to work, conservation group says

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

The global watchdog responsible for protecting the world’s wealth of species, the UN’s  Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), has looked at the hopes for reining in climate change through geo-engineering. Its bleak conclusion, echoing that reached by many independent scientists, is that the chances are “highly uncertain” [translation: highly unlikely].

Brexit and the Future of the Left [a best post]

Click here to access article by Boris Kagarlitsky from Globalizations. 

The author criticizes much of the left in Britain over their lack of leadership and support for the working class in their vote to leave the European Union which was thoroughly organized to promote neoliberalism and the interests of the international capitalist ruling classes. He sees the same phenomenon here in the United States with the popularity of Trump and the rejection of Hillary Clinton. 

Most of the left in Britain, Europe, and the US have been so co-opted, compromised, and intimidated that they have so far failed to articulate the class issues of this revolt and to lead the working class in their incoherent struggle against the capitalist ruling classes and their neoliberal agendas. Kagarlitsky concludes his essay with this warning:

The struggle for power requires an organization and much more rigid mechanisms of mobilization than network structures. But most of all, it requires a strong will and political independence. The political transformation, which is currently under way in the US and Western Europe, is changing the conditions under which people in the entire world live and struggle, opening new opportunities for them. The opposite is also true: Syriza’s betrayal, Sanders’ capitulation, Corbyn’s wavering are not just issues of Greek, American, or British politics?…?. These are failures for which not only the left but all humanity will pay the price.

The neoliberal system, which the likes of Hillary Clinton and Francois Hollande are trying to preserve, is already so dysfunctional, so decayed that every day it survives undermines the basic means of societal reproduction. If we are not ready to fight for its deconstruction, it will break down naturally. But the alternative will not be a new nice social order imagined by anti-globalists, but rather chaos and barbarism growing spontaneously.

A paralysis of will, which struck the left movement during the epoch of neoliberalism, must be overcome.

Moore: Why Millions of Americans Are Voting Trump

Click here to access brief article and 4:27m video (from Brasscheck TV) posted on 21st Century Wire.

Editors Note [21st Century Wire]: The following is an audio clip is taken from Michael Moore’s recent film,’TrumpLand.’ Ironically, Moore’s film was meant to be a last-ditch pro-Clinton project, but as it turns out, this ultra-liberal enemy of Donald Trump delivered to best explanation for the Trump political phenomenon. Moore set out to make an anti-Trump film, but this clip accidentally went viral and has become a key rallying cry for the Trump Movement. Perhaps Moore is now regretting his inadvertent outburst of honesty.

Clinton can't patch these WikiLeaks

Click here if you wish to access this post by cartoonist Steve Benson directly from The Arizona Republic.

 Hillary Clinton has a leak she can't seem to fix.

The worst kind of leak. WikiLeaks.

The hacker group released its ninth -- yes, ninth -- batch of stolen emails Sunday from Clinton campaign staffers discussing things like how to appeal to black voters and deal with the media. [Unfortunately this post did not provide a link to the Wikileaks release. Here is a post that provides a summary and a link to the Wikileaks post.]

If they're authentic -- Team Clinton questions whether some pieces have been doctored -- they're mostly embarrassing, not the kind of stuff that would end a campaign. Still, the steady stream of insider info has deluged Clinton, stealing some of the spotlight from Donald Trump's troubles.

What do you think?

The Future of New Media

I am posting two talks given by members a new British media cooperative known as the Real Media. They are on a promotional tour throughout Britain trying to drum up support for a new crowd-funded media network. So far they have a YouTube channel on which they post video reports on various subjects. I don't know much about this group--no more than what I've posted here--but it looks like a promising idea similar to one I have long advocated (see my commentary here).

Thomas Barlow, co-founder and senior editor at Real Media, speaks at the Bristol leg of the Real Media tour.

The theme of the evening is 'The Future of Real Media', and he is joined by Kerry-Anne Mendoza of The Canary, and Craig McVegas from Novara Media, as well as Dean Ayotte from The Bristol Cable, and Elizabeth Mizon of The Media Fund.

Thomas talks about Chomsky's Five Filters - the distorting filters that lie between the truth and the news we read. He suggests that new media has an opportunity to bypass these filters if we cooperate and work together to build networks rather than compete with each other.

Writer and film-maker Elizabeth Mizon speaks about the launch of The Media Fund at the Bristol leg of the Real Media tour.

The role of the US and Nato in EU relations with China

Click here to access article by Manlio Dinucci from Voltaire Network.

In this article Dinucci offers a very insightful perspective on the US-led Empire's efforts to maintain and extend their dominance of the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

To maintain its supremacy, increasingly wavering, the US relies not only on the strength of its weapons [via NATO], but also weapons more efficient than “weapons” in the strict sense of the word.

Christians in Syria: “Help us pull our country back from the brink of the abyss”

Click here to access article by Alessandra Nucci from The Catholic World Report.

Catholics all over Syria are pleading with all who will listen about the horrors of their war being perpetrated by outside forces. For example:

In an interview with Catholic bulletin La Bussola Quotidiana, Father Mtanios Haddad, Melkite Patriarchal Representative to the Holy See and rector of the Basilica of Saint Mary in Cosmedin in Rome, pointed out that: “In Syria there are 18 Christian families, between Catholics, Orthodox, Catholic Armenians, Orthodox Armenians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Melkites…a mosaic that has always been in harmony with our Muslim cousins. The coexistence among religions was guaranteed for almost half a century by the government of the secular Baath party. In the Baath period we no longer had to indicate our religion on our ID cards. We were all Syrian citizens with equal rights, whatever our religion. Education was free for Christians and Muslims [including women] without distinction.”

He continued: 

This war has made us Christians the target of a fanatical Islam which has been literally imported from abroad.

 ....

Just stop selling arms to the terrorists, don’t let the terrorists come into Syria, it would cost you less. And it’s useless to lament the lack of food, milk for the children, and medicine: all you need to do is, rather, do away with the embargo.

Three things are needful: stopping the trade of arms from America (destined to the terrorists) closing Saudi Arabia’s wallet (which funds the terrorists) and closing the frontier with Turkey (through which come the terrorists).

Meanwhile in a report from one of the two prime media sources for the US-led Empire, the authors report that the CIA will continue to send heavy weapons to the "CIA-back rebels".

The Passion Behind Standing Rock Protest

Click here to access the introduction followed by a transcript of an interview with Bill Means, a longtime Native American activist, by Flashpoints program moderator Dennis Bernstein of KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, California. You can listen to the 10/18/2016 broadcast of this interview which starts at 26:40m into the nearly 56 minute Flashpoints program.

The months-long struggle to stop the Dakota Pipeline near the territory of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota has raised passions among Native American activists and environmentalists who have clashed with police trying to sweep the protesters aside.

To explain the intensity of the resistance, I interviewed Bill Means, co-founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and chairman of the International Indian Treaty Council, which has supported the North Dakota pipeline protests.

The most critical reason of all for the militant protests is the relatively high probability for a pipeline burst under or near the Missouri river adjacent to their reservation. If you think this possibility is remote, see this, this, this, and this.

The dark side of Jewish consciousness: manufactured anti-Semitism

Click here to access article by  Lillian Rosengarten from Mondoweiss.

I dedicate this essay to Hajo Meyer (1924-2014) anti-Zionist, political activist, Auschwitz survivor and hero in the struggle for Palestinian freedom. His words continue to inform me and his actions comfort my sorrow.

“An anti-Semite used to be a person who disliked Jews. I am not anti-Jew. I am anti-Zionist”

 “Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. “

Zionism has always equated any criticism with anti-Semitism, delegitimization or worse. It serves as propaganda to maintain the illusion of Jews as “victims.” Ultra Nationalists who believe in their moral superiority create political terror in order to silence and deny.

Kindest People You've Ever Met: American Journalist Describes Lebanon, Syrian Attitude

 
The following post is a 25:29m interview conducted by a person from Era of Wisdom website the focus of which seems to me to be rather eccentric notions of spirituality and nutrition. However, the interviewee is Branden Turbeville who is a young activist who frequently posts articles with Activist Post. In this interview I regarded Turbeville as a typical young, aware American activist who along with unspecified others attempted to visit Syria, but ended up spending all of their time in adjacent Lebanon. In the interview he reports on his conversations with a lot of Syrian refugees specifically about what is going on in their war-torn country. I was quite fascinated by what he reported and the genuineness of his impressions.

Brandon Turbeville took a trip to Lebanon, and almost made it to Syria last month, to report on what is really going on.

In this interview, Brandon describes the humble, grateful attitude of the Syrian and Lebanese people. He recalls learning how they feel about Assad, the US government, the American people and more.



There is a 12:14m post that concludes this interview which can be found here. I was particularly interested in more of his observations about the Syrian people starting at 8:54m.

Public vs. Media on War

Click here to access article by David Swanson from his blog.

Here is more evidence that the war propaganda issued by corporate media is not having its desired effect.

A new poll from an unlikely source suggests that the U.S. public and the U.S. media have very little in common when it comes to matters of war and peace.

This poll was commissioned by that notorious leftwing hotbed of peaceniks, the Charles Koch Institute, along with the Center for the National Interest (previously the Nixon Center, and before that the humorously named Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom). The poll was conducted by Survey Sampling International.

Workers' share in productivity gains under capitalism

by cartoonist Joel Pett.

The Rise of the Robots

Click here to access article by John T. Larabell from New American. 

The use of automation, artificial intelligence, and robots will undoubtedly created numerous and profound problems for the tiny class who will own these technologies under the system of capitalism. This article is written in the interests of this class and to allay the fears of the ninety-nine percent whom the technologies will undoubtedly impact. Because I don't know Larabell, I can't discern his motivation. He may be a very well indoctrinated useful idiot for the owning class or he may be a knowing, trained agent for this class to insure that we don't get any "bad" ideas about our future.

In any case, in addition to some fascinating recent illustrations of businesses using these advanced technologies, Larabell trots out one capitalist shibboleth after another to insure that we interpret the future properly: without the incentive of money people will do nothing because humans are basically lazy, government is a thing out there in the great beyond and is a menace to all freedom loving people, and the market will insure that people remain productive by forcing the unemployed to be creative entrepreneurs. 

Of course, Larabell never refers to the system of capitalism which will create these future problems--that would be blasphemy! Thus any ideas to suggest that society as a whole has any legitimate claim to these marvelous technologies is forbidden because they are legitimately "owned" by a tiny class of people. Also forbidden are any thoughts that the vast majority of people can benefit from these technologies by freeing them from the dulling effects of wage labor to engage in educating and governing themselves to create a decent, sustainable, and peaceful society and world.

The really only interesting part of this article are illustrations of the new uses of these technologies. Aside from this, you might want to avoid subjecting yourself to the ideologically tainted treatment of the social issues by skipping the rest of the text and listening only to Larrabell's comments in the 4:54m video. 

When AT&T Profits Off Government Snooping, Shouldn’t We Be Blaming the Government?

Click here to access article by Scott Shackford from Reason.

The author borrows heavily from the Daily Beast's article by Kenneth Lipp to put a spotlight on the close relationship between the government and AT&T which is apparently making mega profits by selling their data about our private communications to the government. Unfortunately, Shackford's shallow take on this collusion omits any serious understanding of today's political realities. Lipp's take on this issue is hardly better by introducing the issue with an illustration of how this arrangement was able to solve a particular crime. 

What both missed, and particularly Shackford, is that there is now a complete integration of corporations and the government. They have a symbiotic relationship to insure that the tiny ruling capitalist class's interests are always protected from the vast majority of ordinary people. This relationship provides our masters an end run around the right to privacy enshrined in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution by contracting out the collection of private data to AT&T and other corporations. This arrangement does away with the legal requirement of obtaining a warrant from a judge to obtain information about not only potential law breakers, but anyone who engages in remotely seditious activities that threaten our masters.

With their narrow perspectives the two journalists miss entirely one major characteristic of fascism: the symbiotic nature of government and the capitalist ruling class. The latter have found numerous ways--not only by violating the right to privacy--to defeat every protection of the people from their rule.

Our current US ruling class has also added various laws (Patriot Acts) that can suspend our civil rights whenever they decide that events constitute an emergency, and by establishing locally unaccountable militarized police forces and fusion centers under the centralized control of the Department of Homeland Security. However, as long as their control of information and their holding of essentially show elections suffices to dumb-down sufficient numbers of ordinary people, they will not activate their police state methods. Should the former fail to promote their interests of profit and power, our ruling masters are ready to apply the more recognizable fascist measures. This setup provides their essentially fascist rule with a thin veneer of the rule of law, civil rights, and "democracy" which they would like to continue as long as possible.

This Changes Nothing: The Paris Agreement to Ignore Reality

Click here to access article which is an excerpt from a paper by Clive L. Spash posted on Wrong Kind of Green.

What the Paris Agreement tells is a bizarrely unreal story. Apparently, the cause of climate change is not fossil fuel combustion or energy sources but inadequate technology and the solution is sustainable development (i.e. economic growth and industrialisation) and poverty alleviation. As far as the current production and consumption systems are concerned, little needs to change. There are no elites consuming the vast majority of the world’s resources, no multinational corporations or fossil fuel industry needing to be controlled, no capital accumulating competitive systems promoting trade and fighting over resources and emitting vast amounts of GHGs through military expenditure and wars, and no governments expanding fossil fuel use and dependency.

The unreality of this document is only matched by the unreality of the praise given to it by the media and others.

Well, of course, they own the media.

Standing Rock Sioux Pipeline

by cartoonist Khalil Bendib.

Obama administration split on “Plan B” for Syria intervention

Click here to access article by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

The author reviews the recent items in the Washington Post which report on the secret meetings of the National Security Council (NSC) regarding strategies to pursue in Syria. (Unfortunately WSWS's policy is not to include any links to relevant articles, and I don't have time to search for them.) The NSC is a top agency that decides on the imperialist policies of the US. Because the meetings are secret, the substance of the Post's articles must have been leaked to the Post.

Although no decisions have been reached yet, the Post reports seem to indicate that the preponderance of opinion is for the most aggressive strategy which would likely result in the shooting down of Syrian and Russian airplanes.

I fully agree with the author's concluding remark: 

The recklessness of such policies, aimed at deliberately provoking military confrontation with Russia, a power that controls the world’s second-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, is staggering.

Work harder so speculators can get more

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

Class warfare is poised to reach a new milestone as this year’s combined total of dividends and stock buybacks by 500 of the world’s largest corporations will exceed US$1 trillion.

So large is that figure that, for the second year in a row, the companies comprising the S&P 500 Index (a list of many of the world’s biggest corporations) will pay out more money in dividends and stock buybacks than the total of their profits. Yes, times are indeed good for speculators. Not so good for employees — you know, the people who do the actual work — whose pay is stagnant or declining so that those at the top can scoop up still more.

Dolack once again explains how certain aspects of capitalism works in today's world. Today he focuses on stock buybacks that drive up stock prices. This phenomenon appears to start with the privately owned and controlled central banks and their recent policy of creating money on their computers which they refer to as "quantitative easing". It's a convoluted process, and I'm  not sure I understand it.

Tribute to the Last Honorable US Senator: The Story of Paul Wellstone’s Suspected Assassination

Click here to access article by Joachim Hagopian from Global Research. (Note: Instead of posting this article from Hagopian's blog according to my usual policy, I am using the post from Global Research because it includes a much more elaborate bio on Hagopian--at the end of the article.)

On October 25th, 2002 the last great hero of the common people in the US Senate was very likely murdered by agents of the shadow US crime cabal government otherwise known as the Bush-Cheney regime. His wife and daughter and two pilots also died in the air crash. Paul Wellstone’s story deserves to be retold and Americans need to be reminded that criminals in and out of our government still need to be punished for their unindicted crimes. This article was written as both a tribute to an outstanding American patriot and a reexamination of his probable assassination by criminals still on the loose.

The Cooperative Movement vs. Global Capitalism

Click here to access article by Margaret Rapp from Grassroots Economic Organizing.

This article is a transcript of a talk given by Rapp in Cuba this past June. She provides a useful survey of economic cooperatives, both past and present, their various forms, and their difficulties, for anyone interested in co-ops.

I don't believe that even the most intensive type form of cooperative--worker owned and managed enterprises--can offer any kind of effective challenge to capitalist directed corporations. However, they can be useful to materially support workers who are unemployed, who can't tolerate working condition in capitalist enterprises, who need to maintain their skills, and those who want to have experience in cooperative management. 

However, I see one exception to my assertion that cooperatives cannot challenge capitalist rule: an ideologically driven media organization to control information and ideas. (I will address the ideology later.) The capitalist ruling class control over information and ideas has been crucial for them to maintain their war prone, boom and bust system, and their ongoing assault on the environment. The continuing concentration of media in ever fewer hands--consider the current proposed merger between AT&T and Time-Warner--gives this class more power to shape information, ideas, values, etc to serve their many anti-social agendas. We now see the results of this power in the overwhelmingly false reporting of news about both domestic and foreign affairs which liberals and leftists like to rail about in alternative media. Then, of course, this control furthers the capitalist ruling class control over basic ideas and values that serves to add legitimacy to their barbaric system. 

Thus far I have seen only two articles which express even mild concern over this merger in the alternative media: here and here. One might argue that the concentration of media is already so extreme that more of it will not substantially change things, but the writers of these articles don't make that argument. These writers and the general population seem blissfully unaware of the significance of the control of information and ideas. This is definitely not true for the capitalist ruling classes.

I am making the argument that forming an international network of journalists and other interested people who are dedicated to honest reporting not only offers a media source that can 1) insure the communication of truthful information, but can also 2) offer a revolutionary catalyst for the overthrow of capitalist class rule. 

Consider the fact that poll after poll shows a deep distrust of mainstream media: see here and here. If people had access to another significant media source that could demonstrate honest reporting, the general public likely over time would turn to this source in increasing numbers. Thus far existing alternative media agents exhibit the same basic individualistic motives as their counterparts in mainstream media: they see themselves competing with other rivals in alternative media for donations and advertising. These influences must be acknowledged and dealt with by those who are still uncorrupted by capitalist ideology, and by those who have come to understand the most crucial issues of all: war and environmental destruction which threaten human survival.

By significant media source I mean a global network of reporting activists who are truly independent (not funded by capitalist sources) and dedicated to providing the most accurate information possible to all people in the world. This dedication to truth would be the fundamental consideration for participation in the network. Beyond this would be a dedication to social justice, equality, and genuine democracy in a world free of any social class domination. By combining numerous worldwide resources and skills in an organized network could such a organization become a significant media source which provides not only information but a platform for ideas consistent with the latter basic values. I believe that increasing numbers from the general populations would financially support such an alternative media organization.

Now with regard to a revolutionary catalyst, I argue that such an alternative global media network would obviously draw attention from capitalist ruling classes who regard the control of the dissemination of information and ideas as crucial to their continued rule over the world. They would use smears, infiltration, police intimidation, outright assassinations of alternative journalists, and all other means to destroy such a global media network. However, such attacks are likely to provoke a backlash from people in the general population, particularly if such attacks were well publicized in this alternative media. There would ensue an ongoing battle which could radicalize many formerly inactive people from the general population, and over time could evolve into an effective revolutionary movement.

The Path to Total Dictatorship: America's Shadow Government and Its Silent Coup

Click here to access article by John W. Whitehead from The Rutherford Institute. 

Say hello to America’s shadow government.

A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

The fact of a shadow government or deep state that is in control of our government and society seems to be catching on among people who do not identify themselves as radicals. This attempt is noteworthy in that regard, but it is rather flawed.

Whitehead actually identifies two shadow governments; but his second, Continuity of Government, is only a creation of the first which the shadow government will use in the event of an emergency to the their rule. And I have problems with his identification of the first shadow government. 

It is much to broad. He identifies agencies that are under the control of the real shadow government. He never comes close to the real agents in this shadow government by identifying them as top actors and organizations in the capitalist ruling class: top bankers and heads of other financial organizations and their participation in such organizations as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institute, or any other top policy-making ruling class organization.

US faces megadroughts and superstorms

Click here to access article by Tim Radford from Climate News Network. 

Climate change makes it at least three times more likely that tropical superstorms such as Hurricane Sandy will hit north-eastern cities in the US in coming decades.

In 2012, Sandy flooded parts of New York and New Jersey with three metres of storm surge on top of a high tide and altogether caused $71bn in damage and claimed 157 lives.

Climate change could also mean that the chances of megadroughts – 35 years or more of parched soils – could become much more likely in the US Southwest during this century.

The good news is that both events are naturally rare. And, even better, the future risks in each case could be reduced by sharp cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions.

But the findings, in recent studies led by Princeton and Cornell universities, represent an identifiable future cost of climate change under the business-as-usual scenario, in which fossil fuel combustion continues to increase at present rates.

Global warming continues; 2016 will be the hottest year ever recorded

Click here to access article by John Abraham from Skeptical Science. 

We know the world is warming – no factor can explain it aside from human emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite this, people who deny the basic facts of climate change have tried to argue that the Earth is either not warming or is only slowly heating. Well that just isn’t true anymore. The last three years are the nail in the coffin of the deniers of climate change. We have enough data this year to call 2016 as the hottest year ever record – and we have three more months left to go.

So, just how hot is 2016?

The Nature of Capitalism

Click here to access article by Troy Vettese from Jacobin. 

The title for this article is much too abstract for its contents. (The could be the fault of the editor of this website.) The author lauds a new book entitled Fossil Capital by Andreas Malm as possessing rather new radical ideas.  It seems to me that I have seen other writers using the very same reasons to explain why early capitalists turned to coal as an energy source. 

In my mind what is new is that Malm points to a historical parallel for the use of coal by early capitalists with their current preference to use fossil fuels as an energy source over renewable forms energy. Hence "green capitalism is an oxymoron". 

The rout extends to many renewable energy firms that have recently withered or gone bankrupt. “From a peak in 2011 to the year of 2013,” Malm observes, “global investments in renewable energy fell by 23 percent. In Europe the figure was a stunning 44 percent (Malm’s emphasis).”

That the use of renewable energies has declined is not convincingly presented in this article, and it needs to be considering that the use of renewable energies has reportedly been increasing. Somebody is lying by distorting data.

What is clear is that capitalists because of the system's growth imperative must use energy sources that are very flexible and the cheapest. These two reasons account for the fact that contemporary capitalists will never accept paying the full price--nor could they--of the horrific damage inflicted on our planet-home by their use of fossil fuels. 

Russia continues to destroy the New World Order morally and politically

Click here to access article by Jonas E. Alexis from Veterans Today.

Are New World Order agents ready to deal with Putin and indeed Russia? Do they want war or peace? Are they willing to drop their essentially diabolical plan and face reality?

The author exposes the inherent biases that is expressed in most of current Anglo-American media (with special emphasis on "The Spectator") and by officials regarding the new "Hitler" Putin and Russia.

War, US Government Corporate Propaganda, The CIA And The Russian "Putin Threat"

Click here if you wish to access this 33:34m video interview with Prof. Mark Crispin Miller directly from YouTube. (Note: I could not find it on KPFA's Workweek program which is credited with doing the interview.) 

I originally discovered Miller around 1990 when I subscribed to his email list to receive his articles. This was before the World Wide Web. After the web was established, I dropped my subscription. To my delight I re-discovered Miller only in the last few years. Since then I have become even more impressed with his integrity and his exceptional knowledge about media and propaganda. It was wonderful to learn that this tenured professor of media studies at NY University is still very active in exposing the widespread use of dis-informing propaganda that our ruling class masters are using incessantly to keep ordinary people in complete ignorance about what they are doing.

New York University professor Mark Crispin Miller talks about war, the US government propaganda, the corporate media, the CIA and the Russian "Putin" threat. Miller also reports on how the corporate media tried to get him fired using a NYU graduate student working for VICE owned by Rupert Murdock. He also discusses the role of the United States in overthrowing the Ukraine government and establishing a neo-fascist government. He also analyses the role of the CIA and the US government in their organized effort to demonize Putin and Russia and create a US population hysteria similar to the 1950s possibly leading to martial law and war with Russia.

This interview was done during the Project Censored 40th anniversary at Sonoma State University on October 22, 2016 by Pacifica KPFA WorkWeek host Steve Zeltzer.

American Psycho: Sex, Lies and Politics Add Up to a Terrifying Election Season

Click here to access article by John W. Whitehead from The Rutherford Institute.

Some people are catching on that the current show election sponsored by our masters in the capitalist ruling class has absolutely nothing to do with reality.

It’s like being in the Twilight Zone.

Only instead of Rod Serling’s imaginary “land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas,” we’re trapped in an all-too-real land of politics and lies, where freedom and integrity play second fiddle to ambition and greed.

Nothing is real.

This year’s presidential contest and its candidates have, through their double-talking and lies, pulled back the curtain to reveal that what we see is all part of an elaborate hoax, a cruel game where “we the people” are just pawns to be used, abused, discarded and demonized when convenient.

My video for Moby, ‘Are You Lost In The World Like Me?’

Click here if you wish to access this animated 3:15m cartoon directly from Steve Cutts' website.

I think that Cutts is a brilliant illustrator and animator (as he describes himself). If you like this post, I'm sure you will be enticed to explore his other material.

“The Solution Must Hurt Capital”: an Interview with Tamás Krausz

Click here to access article from LeftEast.

This largely Balkan and eastern Europe based website features an interview with Hungarian historian Tamás Krausz who remarks on the state of the political left in Hungary. It is not an attractive picture. However, once again my attention was drawn to the importance of the control of media for propaganda purposes.

Orbán’s secret does not consist merely of the fact that he has installed an authoritarian regime that uses nationalist-populist rhetoric to blame Brussels for Hungary’s problems. .... Through his politics of concentration of power, Orbán has managed to gain control of virtually all electronic media. With an arrogance reminiscent of Goebbels, he has set about an ideological reshaping of the entire Hungarian society, and it appears that indeed the majority of Hungarian society has turned into adherents of nationalistic and xenophobic policies.

Agents of the US-led Empire and their capitalist allies everywhere are excelling at this. Compared to Empire propagandists, the worldwide left seems to be at a tremendous disadvantage; and the results do not bode well for the billions everywhere who hunger for real democracy, peace, and social justice. It seems like Empire propagandists have successfully worked their magic everywhere: Poland, Ukraine, now in Syria, and the use of propaganda by NGOs in color revolutions in other countries.

Rigged Elections Are An American Tradition

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

It is an obvious fact that the oligarchic One Percent have anointed Hillary, despite her myriad problems to be President of the US. There are reports that her staff are already moving into their White House offices. This much confidence before the vote does suggest that the skids have been greased.

The current cause celebre against Trump is his conditional statement that he might not accept the election results if they appear to have been rigged. The presstitutes immediately jumped on him for “discrediting American democracy” and for “breaking American tradition of accepting the people’s will.”

What nonsense! Stolen elections are the American tradition.

And he didn't even mention the capitalist funding of candidates, political party restrictions,  gerry-rigging of voting districts, purging of voter lists, and a variety of other methods to alter election results.

Is Washington “False Flagging” The New Russia-Iran-Syria-China “Axis of Evil”, Into Nuclear War?

Click here to access article by Peter Koenig from Global Research. 

This economist and geopolitical analyst is also concerned about the US-led Empire's deep hole that their directors are digging themselves in in the Middle East. Could they be drifting into a Dr. Strangelove frame of mind in order to climb out of this hole by instigating a false-flag event that could bring on a nuclear war conflragration? He examines this insane possibility.

Currently the US is secretly on DEFCON level 3 warning against a Russian nuclear attack (DEFCON = Defense Readiness Condition). The American public doesn’t know it. – Level 3 means an attack could be days away; level one would imply an imminent attack within less than an hour. This in itself is a false flag, a make-believe that a first strike may come from Russia, when the Pentagon hawks openly boast that a first preventive strike is not off the table. Some high level generals even push for it.

There is a massive orchestrated build-up of potential false flags around the globe that would allow a first strike nuclear attack on several fronts against Russia, Syria, Iran and China, by the US armed forces, NATO and the European vassals’ own armies. Israel is poised to launch an attack against Iran.

Goldman Sachs Top Lawyer Is Part of a Secret Banking Cabal as CEO Blankfein Denies One Exists

Click here to access article by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their blog Wall Street on Parade.

We don’t believe that Wall Street banking executives have ever plotted the destruction of the United States. We believe the majority want their children and grandchildren to grow up in a socially stable America. But we also believe they have been blinded by their greed, their multi-million dollar bonuses, their mansions in Greenwich, their yachts and penthouses, from consciously acknowledging that their actions brought us to the brink and continue to endanger America’s economy and future.

Congress has known for some time that the structure of Wall Street and its Federal regulators is contributing to egregiously harmful cartel activity.

In spite of Federal anti-trust laws and denials by bank officials, the Martens find that banking officers are meeting in secret. But that is the way the way capitalist government works in the heart of the global US Empire: denials and massive deceptions. They use fig leafs of laws to hide their obscene practices of Wealth by Stealth. Capitalist ruling class pundits always claim that we have regulatory agencies to monitor corporate behavior to insure that they follow the laws. But the catch is that they always staff these regulatory agencies with their own people, and likewise capitalists fund Congressmen who write the Swiss-cheese laws that these agencies are supposed to enforce. The same is true with the banking industry as you will learn in this report.

A Longtime US Ally, The Philippines Officially Re-aligns With Russia & China

Click here to access article by James Holbrooks from Mint Press News. (Note: I thank my supporters, Caren and Christopher, who have created a sustainable small farm in northwest Oregon for pointing me to this recent development.)

...Reuters is reporting that Duterte announced his official separation from the U.S while speaking in Beijing at a forum in the Great Hall of the People.

“In this venue, your honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States,” Duterte said on Thursday, to wild applause from both Chinese and Filipino business people. Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, incidentally, was also in attendance.

Duterte went further than this, however, stating “America has lost” both militarily and economically in its pursuit of imperialistic hegemony. Interestingly, his comments come a day after Filipino police drove a van into a crowd of demonstrators protesting against U.S. imperialism in the region.

I'm sure that the Philippine government and especially its police and military forces are laced with people who are paid by and serve the US Empire. Hence the incident referred to in the last sentence above. There will be many further such incidents to remove Duterte from office or maybe even kill him.

So Who Hacked Clinton? The Truth Could Be More Shocking Than You Expected

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

Well, I don't know if he can validly assert that the truth about the alleged email hacking of Hillary's emails is "more shocking than you expected". At least I was not shocked, and I imagine that the followers of my website will not be shocked at all. Anyway I think you will find that he convincingly argues the real background to this Russian hacking fairy tale put out by corporate media. 

...there is not one scrap of evidence of Russian government involvement.

 The corporate media is trying to lay blame for the hacking of Podesta's and other Clinton campaign officials' email on Russian President Vladimir Putin. That is because the Democrats do not want to be embarrassed by admitting that the real culprits are hackers who want to know more about Podesta's knowledge of the "little gray aliens." It is the fault of Podesta and Mr. and Mrs. Clinton that they have attracted, with their talk about aliens, every computer hacker and script kiddie on the planet hungry for any morsel held in government and private computers about ET.

Just when most people believed the 2016 presidential election could not become any stranger, it has taken a nose dive into the “Twilight Zone.” As far as this writer’s knowledge of hackers, it was my job to monitor hacker operations throughout the 1980s and 1990s for the NSA, Department of State, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and U.S. Navy. It was clear then, as it is evident today, that computer hacking blamed on nefarious “state-supported” hackers was almost always the result of a teenager connected to a modem from his or her parents’ basement. 

The Ruling Elite Has Lost the Consent of the Governed

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

Unfortunately for the ruling Elite and their army of engorged enablers and apologists, they have already lost the consent of the governed. They have bamboozled, conned and misled the bottom 95% for decades, but their phony facade of political legitimacy and “the rising tide raises all boats” has cracked wide open, and the machinery of oppression, looting and propaganda is now visible to everyone who isn’t being paid to cover their eyes.

Brimming with hubris and self-importance, the ruling Elite and mainstream media cannot believe they have lost the consent of the governed. The disillusioned governed have not fully absorbed this epochal shift of the tides yet, either. They are aware of their own disillusionment and their own declining financial security, but they have yet to grasp that they have, beneath the surface of everyday life, already withdrawn their consent from a self-serving, predatory, parasitic, greedy and ultimately self-destructive ruling Elite.

I hope he is right. 

Washington moves to silence WikiLeaks

Click here to access article by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

The US-led Empire is waging a massive and comprehensive propaganda war against its own populations, and sources like Wikileaks must be destroyed or access to their information severely restricted in order for the Empire's war-mongers to be successful in their pursuit of profits and domination throughout the world.

Because truth is the enemy of the Empire and Julian Assange and Wikileaks have been exposing so many of the Empire's lies and evil deeds, Assange and Wikileaks have become one of many of the Empire's list of enemies to be eliminated. Auken reports in this article the extent to which they have gone to silence him and Wikileaks, and their efforts to smear the many released embarrassing emails as contaminated by the nefarious machinations of Russia, another top enemy of theirs. He smells an odor of desperation in their efforts at suppressing reports of the Empire's war crimes, their ongoing theft of the wealth created by working people in the US and throughout the world, and the corrupt functioning of what is supposed to be a democratic system of rule.

The use of such tactics is a measure of how terrified the US ruling class has become in the face of growing mass hostility to both major political parties and their two abhorrent candidates. Their fear is that the relentless exposure of the inner workings of a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich is robbing the existing political setup of what little legitimacy it had left within the population, and creating the conditions for a political radicalization within the working class and social upheavals, whoever is elected on November 8.

Our Sieges and Theirs

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

If you need to know how to interpret corporate media reports on the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, reading this article is a must. Here is a sample:

That Washington protests so vehemently about the humanitarian consequences of Syria’s campaign to liberate East Aleppo from Al Qaeda, while US forces and their allies kill civilians through airstrikes, artillery bombardments and siege-related famine and disease in campaigns to capture territory from Islamic State, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and Syria’s secular Arab nationalists, invites the obvious question: Why the double standard? Why does the Western heart beat for the civilians harmed in the campaign to liberate East Aleppo but not for the civilians harmed by Western campaigns to bring territory under the control of the United States and its proxies?

The answer, in short, is that Al Qaeda is a US asset in Washington’s campaign to overthrow the Arab nationalists in Damascus, and therefore Washington objects to military operations which threaten its ally.

Four Unicorn Riot Journalists Face Charges For Covering #NoDAPL

Click here to access article issued by the collective at Unicorn Riot. 

This article provides an example of a grass-roots, citizen organized media organization.  I have often argued that a nationwide network of such organizations is essential to insure the dissemination of accurate information within our nation which is inundated with largely pro-ruling class propaganda from corporate media. Also I believe that the very operation of such an independent media would threaten the rule of the capitalist class and thereby function as the most promising catalyst to organize an effective revolutionary organization throughout the United States.

As you can see in this article, the Unicorn Riot media collective, which is based in Minneapolis, is providing ongoing coverage of the struggle waged by indigenous populations and other concerned citizens against the Dakota Access Pipeline just south of Bismarck, North Dakota.

Since April 1st, 2016, Unicorn Riot has been covering the Sacred Stone Spirit Camp, and the subsequent #NoDAPL movement, to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) underneath both the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

Over three hundred tribes have come together to say no to the Dakota Access Pipeline. We’ve lived in a camp alongside these nations, sharing their culture and traditions and standing united in what some have called the largest gathering of Native people since 1898.

Over the last month, various law enforcement agencies, private mercenary organizations, and other DAPL assets, have expanded their aerial surveillance, “information” checkpoints, and use of heavily armed riot police backed by MRAP‘s and Bearcat armored vehicles. Amidst the militarized crackdown on demonstrations against the pipeline, hundreds of people have been arrested, including four Unicorn Riot journalists.

The Truth About Donald Trump [The YouTube post has been removed--I don't know by whom.]

Click here if you wish to access this portion of an audio interview with David Icke directly via YouTube. (Note: this appears to be a radio interview or podcast conducted by some American radio station or website. This morning I have spent far too much time trying, and failing, to locate the source.) (Note 2: edited at 3:45 Pm Seattle time following a comment by one of my astute readers.)

In the following interview with Icke he offers so many accurate insights about current major events--far beyond merely his views about Trump. He is also trying to use many other means of expressing his views mostly by directly talking to audiences across Britain, Canada, Europe, and the United States.

All that I know accurately about David Icke is that he has had an extensive career as a sports broadcaster and commentator in Britain. If you consult Wikipedia regarding him, you will find a major smear piece referring frequently to him as a "conspiracy theorist". While I have often used Wikipedia as an accurate source reference, I know that anyone can enter a piece on this website and have it posted by meeting certain standards of the managers of the website. This involves mostly the furnishing of documentation for the contents. Clearly whoever posted this entry had major motivations to undermine the views of Icke. Look at the length of it! You would think that Icke was a major world figure. But the truthful views expressed by Icke are a major threat to the Empire's fake version of reality as expressed in their corporations' media.

I urge you to listen to the entire 54:41m interview and decide for yourself, as an independent, informed, and critical thinker, if he knows what he is talking about. I think you will agree that the deep state that governs the Empire desperately need to prevent his views from being heard or taken seriously in order to superimpose their ongoing narrative about the major realities of today's world.

On the other hand, this could be a brilliant piece of "psyop" propaganda--see the two comments that follow this post.

The New U.S. Way Of War

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

Bernhard is a master at dissecting news from major and more obscure, but accurate media sources to find what is really going on especially in the Middle East where US Empire forces are so active. In this piece he takes some information from a NY Times article to construct a fairly new model that the Empire uses (for example in Somalia), and has used, to destabilize countries and spread chaos.

Somalia is an example of the "failed states" the U.S. now creates wherever it goes. A "failed state" then justifies further involvement. The "model" applies around the world:

The Somalia campaign is a blueprint for warfare that President Obama has embraced and will pass along to his successor. It is a model the United States now employs across the Middle East and North Africa — from Syria to Libya — despite the president’s stated aversion to American “boots on the ground” in the world’s war zones. This year alone, the United States has carried out airstrikes in seven countries and conducted Special Operations missions in many more. [from the NY Times]

Such wars are mostly "off the book". Congressional oversight does not happen for them as the impact within the U.S. is too small. The media are practically excluded. The money comes out of secret CIA and special forces accounts or is shaken out of some friendly U.S. client state like Saudi Arabia. No one will find out what methods of force or "interrogation" are used and as those prisoners vanish in some local warlord's dungeon, no one is likely to ever find out....

How Israel seeks to erase the region's history

Click here to access article by Jonathan Cook from The National (United Arab Emirates).

It was presumably intended as an Israeli history lesson to the world. A video posted to social media by Israel’s foreign ministry shows an everyday Jewish couple, Jacob and Rachel, in a home named the "Land of Israel". A series of knocks on the door brings 3,000 years of interruptions to their happiness. First it’s the Assyrians, followed by the Babylonians, Hellenists, Arabs, Romans, Crusaders, Mamluks, and Ottomans – all straight out of Monty Python central casting.

Jacob and Rachel are forced by the warring factions to relocate to ever smaller parts of their home until finally they have to pitch a tent in the garden. Their fortunes change only with the arrival of a servant of the British Empire who returns the title deeds. A final knock disturbs their celebrations. On the doorstep are a penniless Palestinian couple, craning their necks to see what goodies await them inside. 

The Untold History of Palestine & Israel

Click here if you wish to access the 22:31 history as interpreted by Abby Martin and inspired by her recent trip to the area.

Previewing Abby Martin’s on-the-ground investigation in Palestine, The Empire Files looks at the long history of Zionist colonization, expansion and expulsion of Palestine’s indigenous inhabitants.

Giving critical historical context the occupation today, this timeline explores the creation of the state of Israel and how it came to cover so much land since. From the early settlements, to the Nakba, to it’s conquest of the West Bank, Abby Martin reveals the brutally honest root of what is behind the so-called “Israel-Palestine conflict.”

The Role of the US Media in the Palestine Conflict

Click here to access article by Jeremy R. Hammond from Foreign Policy Journal.

The thought-controlling American intelligentsia essentially serve as high priests of the state religion—another phrase borrowed from Noam Chomsky, who has written, “There is indeed something truly religious in the fervor with which responsible American intellectuals have sought to deny plain fact and to secure their dogmas concerning American benevolence, the contemporary version of the ‘civilizing mission.’”

Here the author is referring to the state religion of capitalism and the power that this faith-based system has given a tiny group of people who control the US-led Empire, aka the Anglo-American Empire. To cover up the owners' narcissistic pursuit of profits and power, the well-paid media disciples preach sermons of benevolence, humanitarian wars, "democracy", etc.

The capitalist directors of the Empire colluded with Zionists to construct a fortress in the Middle East, known as Israel, to insure that Empire capitalists would control the valuable oil resources of the region.

ISIS Moves To Syria Where Erdogan Still Aims For Aleppo

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

Bernhard often micro-analyzes conflicts down to obscure details which I am not interested. But my main takeaway from this article is the convincing evidence he provides to explain the Empire's very active promotion and participation in the attack on Mosul in northern Iraq.

The attack on Mosul proceeds on three axes. From the north Kurdish Peshmerga under U.S. special force advisors lead the fighting. Iraqi forces attack from the east and south. The way to the west, towards Syria, is open. The intend of the U.S. is to let ISIS fighters, several thousand of them, flee to Deir Ezzor and Raqqa in Syria. They are needed there to further destroy the Syrian state.

Is the US election rigged?

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

Read the article if you still need to know roughly why all US elections are rigged to exclude anyone that opposes unbridled capitalism.

Is the election rigged? Of course it is—to produce an outcome acceptable to the ruling class. The entire political system is rigged and fundamentally undemocratic because capitalism is a system of class exploitation in which real political power is concentrated in the hands of a corporate-financial oligarchy.

The Most Important WikiLeaks Revelation Isn’t About Hillary Clinton

Click here to access article by David Dayen from New Republic. (Edited for clarity around 2:50 PM Seattle time.)

I think that Dayen in this article reveals much more than he intended about the way political power works in the capitalist-ruled United States of America, and especially about the political facade that capitalist power brokers have mostly constructed since WWII. He obscured these revelations by focusing narrowly on factions within the Democratic Party. 

It's no wonder that he appeals to so many media executives of what passes for left-of-center media as described in his bio. It is his skill at reporting reality while, at the same time, truncating and obfuscating the real significance of the political realities of what he is writing about. This is a very important skill that the more reputable corporate media really values.

In this piece he lends a leftist cachet to his analysis by using Wikileaks references to emails of the co-chair of Obama's transition team, John Podesta (now Hillary's campaign chairman), that occurred before he was elected. Dayen then brings us up-to-date by describing a minority branch of the Party that represents Elizabeth Warren who wants some sops given to the middle class.  

However, it's clear who is really in control of the candidates--the financial oligarchy from Citigroup, Goldman-Sachs, and the private equity firm of Blackstone. However Dayen seems unconcerned about the anti-democratic nature of political power in the US. By focusing our attention only on which faction of this financial oligarchy will determine the key figures or handlers in the Hillary Clinton's administration, he serves to normalize the rule of the highest layer of the capitalist ruling class. 

Who gets these cabinet-level and West Wing advisory jobs matters as much as policy papers or legislative initiatives. It will inform executive branch priorities and responses to crises. It will dictate the level of enforcement of existing laws. It will establish the point of view of an administration and the advice Hillary Clinton will receive. Its importance cannot be stressed enough, and the process has already begun.

Could this be what passes for muckraking journalism in 21st century America?

Another leaked email revealed by Wikileaks was one reported in Independent (Britain) entitled "Hillary Clinton emails leak: Wikileaks documents claim Democratic nominee 'thinks Saudi Arabia and Qatar fund Isis'" where she wrote the following in an email to John Podesta, her campaign chairman:

While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [Isis] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.

NYT’s Absurd New Anti-Russian Propaganda

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from Consortium News. 

I've often expressed my astonishment regarding the use of gross war propaganda by the most responsible section of corporate media. I ask you, is the functioning of this media any different than what existed in Nazi Germany in the 1930s? This is more evidence that a system of fascism rules in America, but an updated one that rules behind a rather thin facade of "democracy" and perception management. However if our masters have their way, the results will likely be the same--except that the devastation will be infinitely worse.

The U.S. government ... has built extensive propaganda operations around the world that pump out all sorts of half-truths and disinformation to put U.S. adversaries on the defensive, with the American financial hand kept hidden so the public is more likely to trust the claims of supposedly independent voices.

M.A.D.: The Nuclear Debate America Should be Having

Click here to access article by Adeyinka Makinde from his blog.

Makinde reviews the extensive history of the 20th century's Cold War and the current continuing development of Cold War 2.0 in the 21st century which he sees as more dangerous. Whereas the earlier version was prevented from developing into a nuclear conflagration because of a militant peace movement and leaders like John F. Kennedy, nowadays both seem to be missing. 

Unlike during the Cold War, there are no large, vocal anti-nuclear campaign groups organising demonstrations and making public appeals. While there is a press, the American mainstream media has failed to put these issues squarely into the public domain. The coverage of dangerous Russo-American confrontations such as Ukraine and Syria which ultimately should bring the wider issue of nuclear strategy to the fore is edited, biased and highly compartmentalized. Among America’s political leadership there is silence and incoherence. This state of affairs has resulted in a misdirected discourse and a cruelly misinformed public.

It is a debate which America continues to bypass at its own peril.

I think that Prof. James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya back in 2012 offer the best explanation that I can find for this phenomenon in an article entitled "The Rise of the Police State and the Absence of Mass Opposition".

The key to the police state operations of the US in the 21st century is to repress pro-democracy citizens and pre-empt any mass movement without undermining the electoral system, which provides political theater and legitimacy.  A police state ‘boundary’ is constructed to ensure that citizens will have little option but to vote for the two pro-police state parties, legislatures and executives without reference to the conduct, conditions and demands of the core, inner and outer circle of victims, critics and activists.  Frequent raids, harsh public ‘exemplary’ punishment and mass media stigmatization transmit a message to the passive mass of voters and non-voters that the victims of repression ‘must have been doing something wrong’ or else they would not be under police state repression.

The key to the police state strategy is to not allow its critics to gain a mass base, popular legitimacy or public acceptance. 

Also you might be interested to see in the following video how Adeyinka Makinde argues that "NATO is a private club of war criminals".