The new faces of Jewish-American resistance to Israel

Click here to access article by Azad Essa from MiddleEastEye.net. 

The author provides quotes from many young Jewish-Americans regarding their opposition to Zionist policies and actions, and the Zionist government in Israel. You won't hear these voices in US corporate and so-called public media. 

You may also be interested in the latest post entitled "‘Rule of law’ states defend Israel’s cold blooded murder of peaceful demonstrators while trying to rob Venezuela of its oil" by Stephan Gowans in which he writes:

... Israeli murderers gun down Palestinians who peacefully demand what is due to them as human beings, and this passes without comment by the self-proclaimed defenders of the rule of law. In Western capitals, the only discussion about Israel is one pivoting on the contrived concept of the ‘new’ anti-Semitism, an all too transparent ploy to suppress criticism of Al Capone’s crimes, while John Dillinger gets on with robbing Venezuela of its treasure trove of oil and gold.

Mar 15 walks: I don't see a 'crisis' in Caracas? Where does MSM get their info? [post updated]

Independent journalist Eva Bartlett recently traveled to Venezuela to see what economic conditions were like, and she in this video via YouTube compares her experience with the Empire's propaganda issued by corporate and so-called public media corporations like NPR and BBC. 

This is likely the first of many reports by Bartlett regarding the situation in Venezuela.



You may also be interested in another report entitled "On the Ground in Venezuela vs. the Media Spectacle" from independent British observers who have been on the streets of Caracas and other places in Venezuela.

British photojournalist Alan Gignoux and Venezuelan journalist-filmmaker Carolina Graterol, both based in London, went to Venezuela for a month to shoot a documentary for a major global TV channel. They talked with journalist Paul Cochrane about the mainstream media’s portrayal of Venezuela compared to their experiences on the ground.

On Contact: Extinction Rebellion [segment 2 of the interview]

Click here if you wish to directly access Chris Hedge's interview with the British head of Extinction Rebellion from RT America. (Segment 1 largely deals with the objective of Extinction Rebellion and its global strategy to non-violently deal with the overwhelming signs of man-made altering of ecosystem to the point that we now face extinction if we continue emitting carbon into the atmosphere. You can skip segment 1 if you are already aware of this threat.)

Some environmental activists argue the only way to stop the impending ecocide is to carry out nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to shut down the capitals of the major industrial countries, crippling commerce and transportation until the ruling elites are forced to publicly state the truth about climate catastrophe, implement radical measure to halt carbon emissions by 2025, and empower an independent citizens committee to oversee the termination of our 150-year binge on fossil fuels. UK-based group Extinction Rebellion has called for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience on April 15 in capitals around the world to reverse our “one-way track to extinction.” Joining Chris Hedges in the second part of a two-part discussion from London is Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion.

In this segment of the interview, both participants emphasize the non-violent nature of the protests. I think this is completely naive. They both see the need to be realistic in proposing their strategy of massive non-violence, but in doing so I think they are being unrealistic about the drugged rule of their adversaries.

Throughout my many years of warnings about the threat of extinction, I have always emphasized the drugged nature of our adversaries in the dominant capitalist ruling classes that make up the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. The organization of the Empire reflects their own makeup of the latest iteration of capitalist rule (neoliberalism): the transnational character of their rule and the globalization of their activities based on the old cornerstone of capitalism--the sanctity of private ownership of the economy using a hierarchical system of authority. Because of this hierarchical system that they necessarily employ, a relatively few people that makeup this ruling class determine how the rest of humans will participate in their societies. Most important of all is that this capitalist system is fundamentally in conflict with our biosphere, but their addiction to power and the basic conflict between capitalism and a sustainable planet prevents them from acknowledging that fact.

I insist that we recognize the drugged nature of these people: they are thoroughly addicted to power that the system of capitalism delivers to them. Addiction is a strong word, but I use it deliberately to indicate the reality of their irrational behavior that is inevitably leading to the extinction of all of us whether capitalist or ordinary people.

The unrealistic nature of the strategy that Hallam is proposing is based on massive participation to shut down the capitalist organization of most of the world's economies. Both Hedges and Hallam wrap themselves in the completely unrealistic righteous clothing of non-violence. But we are not dealing with rational people. We are confronting a very powerful and addicted tiny class of people who have demonstrated over and over that they will stop at nothing to preserve their power. Thus, we must not advocate the violent overthrow of this regime, but be ready as best we can to confront their violence with our own violent power in defense of our objective--a sustainable planet. To do anything less is to accept defeat which means our disappearance from the Earth. We won't have a second chance at devising a new strategy. We must put everything into this effort to save ourselves if we want to continue our very existence as a human species. 

It’s the Green New Deal or Else

Click here to access article by Paul Street from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

Now that we understand these economic realities [as presented to us by capitalist class "experts"], we can prepare—without rebellion, with calm acceptance and within the limits of our stagnant incomes—for our coming extinction. Onward with the coming macroeconomic ecocide. [satire]

Except, wait. Hold on. Maybe Ohanian [one of the "experts"] is full of petroligarchic crap. Maybe there’s still hope for the species after all.

He is, and there is [maybe].   [my insertions]

The road to hell

By cartoonist Max Gustafson from his website.

3-5°C temperature rise is now ‘locked-in’ for the Arctic

Click here to access the latest press release from the United Nation's Environment Programme. 

Nairobi, 13 March 2019 – Even if the world were to cut emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, winter temperatures in the Arctic would rise 3-5°C by 2050 and 5-9°C by 2080, devastating the region and unleashing sea level rises worldwide, finds a new report by UN Environment.

Meanwhile, rapidly thawing permafrost could even accelerate climate change further and derail efforts to meet the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of limiting the rise in global temperature to 2°C, warns Global Linkages - A graphic look at the changing Arctic.

More bad news that will be ignored or pushed to the back pages of corporate newspapers so that the implications of this latest news will not discourage anyone from getting into their vehicle to go shopping, flying across country, generally engaging in business as usual, or questioning the capitalist system that makes all these activities (and much more) essential to the functioning of the system. We wouldn't want to interfere with the tiny class of capitalists getting drug-fixes from their obsessive pursuit of profits and power, would we? 

Recommended articles for Thursday, March 14, 2019

• (Update): HowOnline Users responded to YouTube’s termination of Middle East Observer – Facts & Figures from Middle East Observer.net. (This website can be easily confused with Middle East Observer.org.)

• The Youth Climate Strike and the fight against global warming by Bryan Dyne from World Socialist Web Site.

Yellow Vests: The search for a “collective Robespierre”, for a new Incorruptible!

Click here to access article by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, a Greek journalist, posted on United World (based in Turkey).  (A "best post".)

I'm beginning to regard the author as a very deep thinker. 

In this article he has reported on conversations with various people in France in order to make make sense of the Yellow Vest movement. He has learned much. The ordinary French people are coming together, learning from each other and their rich history of revolution, and from all appearances, to be in an incipient stage of developing a revolutionary consciousness that could challenge the rule of their neoliberal masters (the current rule of transnational capitalists). 

The French popular classes have proven that they possess enough accumulated social intelligence and political experience, on the one hand, to demolish the arguments of the Neoliberals and, on the other, to articulate their demands of radical control of the political system, long ago bought and controlled by the Financial Oligarchy.

Richard Wolff on the money behind Brexit

Economist Wolff gives his interpretation of what in going on in Britain over the Brexit issue.

But first, RT reporter Eisa Ali brings up-to-date on the main facts about Brexit, the past vote to leave membership in the European Union. The main facts are that Britain is not prepared for leaving which by law is March 29th because they don't have import taxes and customs like they did before. Perhaps the Parliament will simply extend this deadline beyond March 29, 2019. 

The socialist economist sees it as the British people's surprising rejection of the economy since the collapse in 2008, much like the surprising election of Trump in the USA, and pits the rich financial sector against the people in general who are dissatisfied with the continuing poor economic conditions.

Max Blumenthal: Report From the Real Venezuela

R. J. Eskow of the Zero Hour, a channel of YouTube, interviews Max Blumenthal, who has recently returned from Venezuela. 



Having visited Venezuela at the end of 2005 and followed events there closely many years thereafter, I had some basis for evaluating Blumenthal's report. I found his observations to be completely credible. But I was surprised at one of his statements.

He said starting at 8:58m after describing a protest demonstration at the east end of Caracas, the rich district, that he witnessed the end of the coup attempt. Thus, he clearly implies that if the Empire's regime-change project is going to succeed that a US invasion or some proxy invasion would be necessary. I regard this implication as completely unrealistic from an even imperialist point of view. 

I think the whole project of regime-change in Venezuela was a result of an almost hysterical attempt to salvage the Empire's costly defeat in Syria. I now think that this regime-change defeat has broken the Empire's back, so to speak, and the rather slow disintegration of the domination of the Empire is in progress. I see indications everywhere. The following posts I read today support this view: Video: The Price of US “Protection” Is Skyrocketing. Donald Trump’s “Ransom Money” Exacted from America’s Allies, Are we witnessing a new wave of the Arab Spring?, President Rouhani Visits Iraq in broad daylight, The End of Truth as We Know It – Or Knew It along with the ongoing Yellow Vest movement in France. Maybe I'm engaging in wishful thinking--you decide.

If I am correct, this view ultimately portends dramatic changes for the standard of living for ordinary people in the USA. Who knows where this will lead?

Wealth Concentration Drives a New Global Imperialism

Click here to access article by Peter Phillips from Project Censored. (I thank an activist for alerting me to this article.)

This professor of sociology summarizes a lot of material to indicate that the system of capitalism is presently literally deadly for the vast majority of humans. The system only serves a tiny minority and it compels them to engage in activities that result in ever greater concentrations of wealth which inevitably results in greater extremes of inequality, wars, the destruction of our habitat, and in the end the extinction of humans (although this is only implied). He states what is becoming obvious to most thinking, unbrainwashed people. 

What Phillips and other thinking people should have been doing is actively engaging in activities that undermine the system by engaging in revolutionary activities to change the system. Perhaps he in his pursuit of an educational career has tried to do this by creating greater awareness of the destructive tendencies of capitalism. However, these aware individuals have been isolated mostly in universities and being few in number mostly as a result of capitalist control of all agencies of indoctrination. 

Many people in other countries, in China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, etc, are waking up to the destruction forces of the system and are fighting back. The story of humans is not yet finished.  

Nasrallah on the End of US Hegemony: Trump will Leave the Middle East, Region Already Reshaping

Click here to access this interview with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah Secretary General conducted by Ghassan Ben Jeddou, founder of the pan-Arab and anti-imperialist Al-Mayadeen TV channel in Lebanon originally posted on Resistance News, Unfilitered which is banned from YouTube by its owner, Google. The posts are picked up and apparently translated by The Unz Review for viewers in the USA. ("Sayed" is an honorary title.)

I listened to both parts of the interview that was held on January 26 on the Lebanese TV station which was very recently posted on this website. I was very impressed with Nasrallah's analysis because it brought together so much I have learned from my readings, research, and posts on this website/blog.

I would go further by arguing that the colonial powers (Britain, USA, and France) are primarily responsible for the turmoil and suffering that has occurred especially recently in the Middle East. This was implied by one of the statements that Nasrallah made (at about 14:24m in the second segment); to paraphrase: the governments would not exist in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt (essentially the old Arab League) without the support of the US Empire. And, of course, Israel should be included. Thus, the conflicts that have divided this region would not exist, although Turkey might still be a problem.

Obama’s ‘Hope and Change’ was a ‘mirage’ says Ilhan Omar

Click here to access article from The Canary (Britain) which gathered the Congresswoman's (Minneapolis voting district) comments from a much longer interview posted on Politico.

The “hope and change” offered by former President Barack Obama was a “mirage”, according to Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

She made the comments during a recent interview with Politico. Politico contrasted Omar, a newly elected US Democratic Party representative from Minnesota, with Dean Phillips, a wealthy businessman. Minnesotans also recently elected Phillips to congress, whom Politico characterised as a centrist and pragmatist. 

Anti-Semitism Pandemic!

Click here to access article by C. J. Hopkins from Consent Factory, Inc.

Hopkins aims his spectacularly endowed satirical weapons on a "virus" that is taking control over the minds of people in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire: antisemitism! This attack is most virulent in Britain. And it's likely coming to America, if not already here! "Read all about it." The Zionist world is especially upset at this development (see this, this, and this). Hopkins concludes with this sage advice:

... get out those vintage plague doctor masks, lock your critical thinking up in your anti-anti-Semitism safe room, and pull up Schindler’s List on Netflix … oh, and don’t forget to scour the Internet for any criticism of the capitalist ruling classes, or the corporate media, or neoliberalism, or any other anti-Semitic tropes!

Maduro’s claim that Washington has used cyberwarfare to bring down Venezuela’s power grid cannot be so easily dismissed

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

As the corporate media and so-called "public media" are urging us to believe that the Maduro government's failings are responsible for the power outage in Venezuela, Gowans argues with documentation and the history of the US's record about causing chaos in countries in which it desires regime change that agents of the USA is more likely the cause of the power outage.

To be sure, there is, at this point, no concrete evidence that Washington has sabotaged Venezuela’s electrical grid, but it has the capability to do so, a record of using cyberattacks against countries slated for regime change, a motivation to throw Venezuela into crisis, and a game plan it has used repeatedly in other countries.

The US hand may be absent from this week’s power failures in Venezuela, but chances are it wasn’t.

Recommended articles for Saturday, March 9, 2019

• US Re-Imprisons Manning To Coerce Her To Testify Against WikiLeaks by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

• (Urgent): YouTube terminates Middle East Observer after almost 10 years online from Middle East Observer and posted on A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. 

The Empire's YouTube strikes again!

• The Fake News Nazi – Corbyn, Williamson And The Anti-Semitism Scandal by David Edwards from BSNews.

Inside the neoliberal laboratory preparing for the theft of Venezuela’s economy

Click here to access article by Canadian Justin Podur from his blog.

This article illustrates the latest use of co-option by the ruling capitalist class to assimilate the well-trained upper-middle class to support the project of advanced capitalist US/Anglo/Zionist Empire--world domination. Because these people have had years of training and survived the filtering out process of institutions of "higher learning", they have been selected from the top universities of the Empire (such as Harvard) to engage their well-honed talents to the Empire's regime-change project in Venezuela. They will be well rewarded by enjoying safe, highly paid careers in academia.

... US foreign policy mobilizes every available resource for regime change and for counterinsurgency. Among those resources, you will always find academics. The pen may not always be mightier than the sword, but behind every US-backed war on a foreign people there will be a body of scholarly work.

The academic laboratory of the Venezuelan coup has the highest academic pedigree of all—it’s housed at Harvard.

As the World Burns: Hurtling Towards an Unlivable Planet

Click here to access article by Paul Street from CounterPunch. 

This the first article I've encountered from a (legitimate) fringe left-wing online website/blog (given that the US political spectrum has shifted rather dramatically to the right in this new century) that deals explicitly with the end of humans simply because the end is in sight and it can no longer be ignored. Expect many more such articles in our limited future as we stare into the headlights of our disappearance as a species. 

Street even knows what is responsible for this catastrophe with his coining of the word "capitalogenic". However, he implicitly regards this species ending event as "unthinkable" by presenting so much evidence that spells our doom as a species, but still holding out, rather lamely, hopeful remarks that we can still change things and save ourselves. His final paragraph illustrates this:

The reigning political and media “elite” is happy to keep capitalogenic global warming on the public margins until long past the last ecological tipping points are passed. They can be counted on them to fiddle and diddle through the species’ final, fossil-fueled flame-out. It is an existential necessity to create a new culture, media, and politics with the elementary natural and social intelligence required to properly prioritize the most pressing problems of our time.

I am frequently guilty of doing the same thing in my commentaries, but in my saner moments I simply want to seek revenge on a tiny capitalist class that has caused our disappearance from the Earth. This is no ordinary crime. 

Presstitutes Turn Blind Eye to UN Report on Venezuela

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog. (I thank a longtime environmental activist for alerting me to this post.)

This originator of the word "presstitutes" points out the rather obvious imperialist bias in reports by the "presstitutes employed by Western media corporations of recent events in Venezuela in order to secure their careers and prepare your minds to accept another of the Empire's regime change operations.

Don’t you think something is fishy when the presstitutes orchestrate a fake news “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela, but totally ignore the real humanitarian crises in Yemen and Gaza? 

Don’t you think something is really very rotten when the expert, Alfred Mauricer de Zayas,  sent by the UN to Venezuela to evaluate the situation finds no interest by any Western media or any Western government in his report?

Don’t you think it is a bit much for Washington to steal $21 billion of Venezuela’s money, impose sanctions in an effort to destabalize the country and to drive the Venezuelan government to its knees, blame Venezuelan socialism (essentially nationalization of the oil company) for bringing “starvation to the people,” and offer a measely $21 million in “humanitarian aid.”

Netflix’s Trotsky: A toxic combination of historical fabrication and blatant anti-Semitism

Click here to access article by David North and Clara Weiss from World Socialist Web Site. 

Once again we learn about the Empire's attempt to manage our thoughts and views about history in order to support their anti-socialist propaganda. This time it is a film series about Trotsky (streamed), one of history's great supporters and promoters of socialism, a system that promotes real democracy and egalitarianism--a system that does away with concentrated power and wealth and which all capitalists fear. This film series illustrate what real antisemitism looks like.

What is being presented by Netflix is not history. It is not even an artistic fictionalization of history, in which certain liberties have been taken for legitimate dramatic purposes. Netflix’s series is a monstrously reactionary exercise in historical falsification. There is not a single scene that attempts to depict historical events with any discernable degree of accuracy. Most of the scenes are grotesque fabrications. Not a single character, least of all Leon Trotsky, bears any resemblance to the historical figure the series purports to represent.

To state the issue posed by this series as bluntly and precisely as possible: Netflix’s Trotsky is the most explicitly and unrelentingly anti-Semitic film that has ever been presented to an American and international television audience.

US House broadly condemns hate amid divide over Ilhan Omar

Click here to access article from Al Jazeera. (Note that Rep. Ilhan Omar is a US Congresswoman from a district in Minneapolis.)

"I want to talk about ... political influence in this country that says it's OK for people to push for allegiance for a foreign country," Omar said during a Washington, DC event. "I want to ask why is it OK for me to talk about influence of the NRA, or fossil fuels industries, or big pharma, and not to talk about powerful lobbying that is influencing policy."

After the event, Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that the comments were a "vile anti-Semitic slur". Some in the House, including Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey, publicly criticised Omar and demanded an apology. 

You may also be interested in a post from Guns and Butter in which Bonnie Faulkner, the show's host, interviews Alison Weir for about one hour.

We discuss Alison Weir’s extended essay, published as a pamphlet, “The International Campaign to Criminalize Criticism of Israel”; the traditional definition of anti-Semitism and the new “improved” 3-D definition of anti-Semitism; the history of the campaign to criminalize criticism of Israel; the many international and national organizations that have adopted and promote the new definition; policing the new anti-Semitism on college campuses; thought crime; AIPAC and ADL; the crack-down on pro-Palestinian political activity; the multiple hundreds of groups that lobby for Israel; current congressional legislation.

Texts show Portland police collaborated with hate group

Click here to access article by Steve McNalley from Liberation. 

A rare find involving text communication between a police lieutenant and a local fascist group, Patriot Prayer, and published by a local Portland (OR) newspaper, Willamette Weekly, is an illustration of the functions of police to protect the ruling capitalist class. Whenever the ruling class is threatened they turn to violent groups to salvage their rule. The classic example of this is in the Great Depression of the 1930s when numerous workers' parties sprung up all over the West. Many US and other European capitalists supported and funded the Nazi Party in Germany. (See also my commentary here for an elaboration in history of this tendency.)

McNalley offers an excellent general observation that the Portland incident illustrates:

These events speak to the historically prevalent trend in the United States of police forces working hand-in-hand with the ultra-right. This is evident from the history of policing as an institution in this country, including their origins as slave catchers and union busters, the coordinated attacks on the Black liberation movement, and the continued over-policing of peaceful protests at Standing Rock and of the Black Lives Matter movement. The police do not exist to protect the people. The police exist to protect the interests of the ruling class and the capitalist system that keeps the majority of people marginalized and oppressed. To that end, they will continue to join forces with violent reactionary groups like PP [Patriot Prayer] who uphold the status quo through force and intimidation. Only by overturning the capitalist system can we hope to effectively and permanently end the threat posed to our communities by groups like PP and the police forces that enable and support them. [my emphasis and insertion]

The Propaganda Multiplier

Click here to access article from Swiss Propaganda Research. (a "best post")

It is one of the most important aspects of our media system – and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.

The key role played by these agencies means that Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.

A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favor of the US and NATO intervention, while propaganda was attributed exclusively to the opposite side.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: Eventually Silicon Valley Will Fall…

Click here to access article by Caleb Maupin from New Eastern Outlook. (Updated at 12:15 PM CT on Friday, March 8, 2019 to include video from RT.)

Maupin uses an historical context regarding the use of propaganda that justifies the rule of powerful social-economic ruling classes to their own populations. His take on Zuckerberg and his Facebook is that he is defending against ruling class pressure to increase the aggressive use of ruling class propaganda in order to prolong the life of Facebook. Because Zuckerberg knows history (according to Maupin), he knows that excessive disinformation can hurt his powerful profit machine and his virtual monopoly over social media.

Sections of the political establishment seem to be demanding that Mark Zuckerberg use his power to shut down speech they deem to be harmful, specifically speech that undermines the narratives of US foreign policy. And while Facebook has certainly done this on multiple occasions, certain powerful voices perceive some reluctance in this censorship and are quite angry about it.

But the reality is, if Facebook becomes too strict and heavy-handed, those seeking alternative views will go elsewhere. This result would be far more damaging to both Zuckerberg and the political establishment in the long term.

As the headline suggests, Maupin sees Zuckerberg's reluctance to these pressures as only temporary.

(You may be interested in this RT video indicating that younger people are getting off of Facebook.)

(If this article was of interest to you, you might also find another article entitled "On TEDx, Gene Therapy, Profits, and Criminal Thinking" by Phil Butler from the same source.)

The beginning of a social “Stalingrad” in Europe: the Yellow Vests against the totalitarian Empire of Finance (part 1 of 3)

Click here to access article by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos from United World, a leftist Turkey-based site. (Updated at 1 PM CT to provide a link to the reference in the article to Mirabeau.)

This is one of the most insightful articles I've seen on the Yellow Vest movement in France. For example, one insight of his got me thinking that it had meaning for the election of Trump. When he asked a French minority party official, Asselineau: 

Can this Rebellion “carnival” turn into a real Revolution? “What is happening in your country? Is it a rebellion? Can we say that it is a Revolution?” I ask Francois Asselineau , a man well acquainted with French history and EU treaties, deeply Gaullist in his ideology and leader of a small party which campaigns for the exit of France from the EU and NATO.

The author writes:

I understand that he is troubled and hesitates to answer – just as with anyone else to whom I have asked the same question. He finally turns to me “I don’t know. Something is missing. There is a portion of the people not ready to risk everything”.

I hear him and what comes to my mind is Wilhelm Reich’s diagnosis. This renowned Marxist-Freudian writer of the inter-war period contributed one of the most insightful analyses of Nazism and was expelled from both the Communist Party and the International Psychoanalytic Association due to his nonconformist and critical thinking. He wrote that the Germans had it bad in the 1930s because they wanted a Revolution but they were afraid of it. Instead of doing it themselves they appointed Hitler to do it for them – and the rest is history.

Also, reference to Mirabeau, a figure of the French Revolution, is made here. 

Recommended articles for Tuesday, March 5, 2019

• In Washington, Regime Change Is Truly and Urgently Needed! by Andre Vltchek from 21st Century Wire. 

Hopefully, he means system change because regime change from one capitalist party to another will change very little, if anything.

• U.S. Thugs warned Russia and Venezuela – They have to be stopped by Andre Vltchek from Defend Democracy Press. 

• Venezuela - Random Guyaidó Returns Only To Again Be Ignored by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama. 

• Israel Lobby Rebuts Omar’s Claims About Its Immense Influence By Exerting Its Immense Influence by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

• ISIL fighters 'surrender in large numbers' in final Syria enclave, a report from Al Jazeera. 

• Exporting American's gun problem? The proposed rule that has monitors up in arms by Dania Akkad from Middle East Eye. 

• Venezuela Coverage Takes Us Back to Golden Age of Lying About Latin America by Mark Cook from CovertAction Magazine.

Joao Pedro Stédile: “Venezuela is Extremely Important Because it is the Battle of This Century”

Click here to access an interview with Stédile conducted by Carlos Aznarez posted on Internationalist 360°. 

This past week’s Latin American Summary covered everything that happened at the International People’s Assembly (AIP), held in Caracas, in solidarity with the people and government of Venezuela represented by Nicolás Maduro. Almost 500 delegates from 90 countries of the world attended the event, and one of the most ardent supporters of this initiative in the last two years is the leader of the Landless Movement of Brazil, Joao Pedro Stédile.

I was quite impressed with the political sophistication of Brazilian activist Stédile, and now hold much hope for the continuing struggle in Venezuela, which could very well be pivotal, against the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire that is currently ravishing the world's people, threatening catastrophic global wars, and destroying the biosphere that we all depend on. Read the details. (By the way, "MST" refers to Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement.)

Charter School Promoters Terrified of Growing Opposition to Their Full-Frontal Assault on Public Education

Click here to access article by Shawgi Tell from Dissident Voice. 

Charter schools mainly enrich major owners of capital while masquerading as education arrangements that “empower parents,” “increase choice,” “serve the kids,” and “close the achievement gap.” The rich and those who wittingly and unwittingly agree with them believe that the chaos, anarchy, and violence of the so-called “free market” is a modern and socially responsible way to organize mass public education in a society based on mass industrial production.

Because the tide is slowly but surely turning against their wrecking activities, supporters and beneficiaries of charter schools are becoming even more arrogant and belligerent in their efforts to expand charter schools.

The Fascinating Spell Cast by Weasels

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from his blog Behind the Curtain.

Curtin expresses his thoughts about one of three human weaknesses that looks increasingly likely to cause the extinction of humans--the fascination of humans for weasel-like others who exude authority and power:

It’s still the same old story, a gory story of the fight to dominate and control that is coterminous with human history or longer. It is an ancient myth that we still live by.  As in days of old, the siren song is often sexual in nature, not sexual in the passionately loving sense, not an encounter between two unknowns seeking to discover each other, but an instrumental sexual enticement wrapped in power, prestige, money, false charm and fake bravado whose purpose is domination.

The other two are: the seduction of power that often leads to the corruption of people (related to the latter weakness), and the lure of immediate gratification in place of an ability to assess developments in the future that might pose threats .  

Financial Imperialism-The Case of Venezuela

Click here to access article by Jack Rasmus from his blog. 

By reading this article you will learn about the details of the 21st century's method of imperialism developed by the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire to destabilize (or to regime-change) governments, using Venezuela as an illustration, that interfere with the Empire's quest for profits and power to the extent of global domination. (Venezuela is much more vulnerable to this method of attack than are Iran, Russia, and China.)

Financial imperialism has been waged against Venezuela for decades, but the attack on Venezuela employing financial measures has recently intensified as the US neocons and imperialists have accelerated their plans to launch a more direct attack by political means, including military, to force regime change in Venezuela. At the center of the on-going, and now intensifying, financial warfare against the country by the US are measures designed to destroy Venezuela’s currency.

The Prisoner Says No to Big Brother

Click here to access article by John Pilger from his blog.

Pilger reports on a recent visit with Julian Assange in which the parallels between Julian Assange and George Orwell's characters and themes are striking.  He uses Assange's courageous example to inspire all of us to:

... stop scrolling. Organise. Occupy. Insist. Persist. Make a noise. Take direct action. Be brave and stay brave. Defy the thought police.

War is not peace, freedom is not slavery, ignorance is not strength. If Julian can stand up to Big Brother, so can you: so can all of us.

If capitalism must end, what should replace it?

Click here to access article by Michael D, Yates posted on Climate & Capitalism. 

The consequences of capital’s drive to accumulate are those outlined in the first paragraphs above. These will, without doubt, intensify in the coming years, with more and more wealth concentrated at the top, with those at the bottom enduring nothing but suffering, with the planet heating up and making human life increasingly precarious. This means that we are doomed unless radical, all-encompassing change takes place. There are two implications of this.

Read the article to find out the details about these two implications, and about what a new social system could look like.

Caracas Chronicles, Part I of an Ongoing Series

Click here to access article by Ken Silverstein from WashingtonBabylon.com.

I just got back from Venezuela and I’ll be writing a lot about the country next week. Virtually everything you read or see about it in the U.S. media is a lie. And to be clear, I don’t mean skewed or misleading or incomplete, I mean a lie.

This independent observer continues on to report what he actually saw on his visit to Venezuela. 

If this article of is interest to you, you might also be interested in the CIA's record of the USA's interference in Venezuelan affairs by reading "The CIA’s View of Venezuela: What We Learn From the Archives" by T.J. Coles from TeleSur. 

Reshaping the Middle East: why the West should stop its Interventions (part 3)

Click here to access article by Elijah J. Magnier from his blog. (part 1 and part 2) (Updated at 11:33 AM CT to include a link to an article by Zuesse.)

In this segment (the last?) one of the world's top (independent) journalists continues to write about all the reasons "why the West should stop its interventions" both in the form of military invasions either directly or by proxy and economic sanctions. This record which he punctuates with graphic illustrations demonstrates that the US, Anglo, Zionist Empire's interventions have caused one disaster after another in the region. But, of course, that is no concern of our criminal masters in the transnational capitalist class who are "the deciders" of these interventions. They want nothing short of control of the entire world. (They already control us through our minds with their use of indoctrination and 24/7 propaganda.)

Recommended articles for Friday, March 1, 2019

• Carbon Taxes Won’t Stop Climate Change by Brian O'Boyle from Rebel (Republic of Ireland). The author gives you the history of the carbon tax fix in Ireland offered by Irish capitalists to cope with global warming. This is the same story, except for details, throughout the capitalist world; and their fix has not changed, nor was it meant to, the destabilization of our climate.

• What's next for US-North Korea ties after Hanoi summit failure? by Faras Ghani from Al Jazeera.

• Salvador Allende’s grandson calls for international solidarity as Venezuela faces US-backed coup, a 5:57m video from The Canary (Britain).

Pablo Navarrete reports from Venezuela, where Pablo Allende – grandson of former Chilean President Salvador Allende – gives a chilling summary of how the US and its allies have destabilised left-wing governments in Latin America and beyond to further their own imperialist interests.

• Michael Cohen hearing: A criminal administration, a reactionary opposition by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site. (I view nearly all governments to date as being illegitimate because they were originally installed by violence in order to serve a tiny ruling class.)

As Al Capone once said, "Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class." 

Recommended articles for Thursday, February 28, 2019 (content added)

• Trump Sticks To Sanctions - U.S., North Korea Summit Fails by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama. (Updated at 4:47 PM CT to add Magnier's article.)

• The Empire sharpens the class struggle by Patrick Corbett from The Greanville Post.

• Amerikan Demokracy: Gatekeeper of Tyranny by Philip A Farruggio from The Greanville Post.

• Can Netanyahu risk a “battle of missiles” with Syria? by Elijah J Magnier for his blog. 

Returning Syrian Refugees Were Fleeing US Proxy War, Not “Assad”

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

Why would people – enjoying refugee status in neighboring countries and even in Europe, risk returning to Syria where “brutal dictator” Bashar Al Assad not only still remains in power – but has decisively defeated his opponents through the use of “barrel bombs,” “chemical weapons,” and other forms of indescribable brutality?

The answer is simple – refugees were fleeing the US-backed war and the terrorists it had armed to divide and destroy the country – not the Syrian government. The vast majority of Syria’s displaced remained inside Syria – and simply moved into areas under government protection. Now with many other areas of the country having security restored by government forces with Russian and Iranian backing – hundreds of thousands more are returning from abroad, including from Europe – according to the BBC itself.

Great effort had been put into misrepresenting the refugee crisis the Syrian conflict triggered – specifically because the specifics of the crisis clearly revealed who Syrians were really fleeing and why. Analysis of Syria’s internally displaced refugees was intentionally and systematically omitted by the BBC and other Western media organizations in their reports over the years to obfuscate the fact refugees were fleeing militants, and voluntarily returning once militants were pushed out of various regions across Syria.

Cartalucci concludes that the BBC does not report news, but functions purely as a propaganda machine. He should also have concluded that all Empire-controlled media corporations serve the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, and as such are all propaganda machines.

This transnational Empire controls not only their media corporations, but all institutions (for the latest example, see this) in the nations under their control; and they, like never before, insure that all institutions serve their capitalist Empire. When this control breaks down, our capitalist masters have no hesitation and no qualms about calling out their military forces to impose violence on their populations. France is the current illustration. The Empire's capitalism has inevitably evolved into fascism with their thorough use of deception and violence, the last stage of capitalism.

All ruling classes, and especially the capitalist ruling class which has refined deception into nearly a science. They rely on deception to maintain their illegitimate exploitation of working people. Nowadays I witness deception everywhere in corporate media coverage as well as in statements made by official representatives of the ruling class. Being retired, I am fortunate to have the time to read in order to check out sources, but the average working stiff has little time left over after struggling to survive, and thus is rather easily deceived. When they can no longer deceive working people is when they resort to the mailed fist of fascism. So where lies hope?

It appears to me that the capitalist system now faces some unsolvable crises, crises beyond the usual ones of boom and bust, wars, widening gaps between rich and poor, uncontrollable and ever expanding debt that characterize capitalism. Now the capitalists’ obsession with never ending pursuits of profits and power have come up against finite environmental limits for many decades. Their obsession is constantly degrading the environment and threatening catastrophic destabilization of our climate. 

Perhaps as working people experience the shocks of widespread unemployment, loss of home ownership, less educational opportunities for their children, more debts for those in advanced education, desertification, violent changes in climate, etc., corporate media along with corrupt official representatives and spokespersons will become thoroughly discredited. Then maybe it will be possible to organize working people to take back their government, to create their own media, to create a just and peaceful, sustainable society. My constant anxiety is that by that time, it will be too late.  

Russia Slides Towards Internal Political Crisis (MUST SEE SouthFront video report!)

Click here to access article by "The Saker" (Andrei Raevsky) from his blog A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. (This is a very important post for two reasons: "The Saker" is a very knowledgeable source for all things Russian and the source he features, SouthFront, is also very reliable.)

After he cites data that support the argument that the Russian government is declining in its support among the public and the likely reasons for this, The Saker writes: 

Meanwhile the general population has no effective levers of pressure to affect or correct government policy. The public political sphere has become a desert. United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) is the only political party still de—facto existing in public politics. By now its ideological and organizational capabilities have become exhausted. Other “political parties and organizations” are just media constructs designed to defend the interests of a narrow group of their sponsors. It is hard to find a lawmaker in the State Duma or the Federation Council, who is not affiliated with the cliquish top political elite and oligarch clans.

In the media sphere, the government has failed to explain its current course to the population. A vast majority of the initiatives of Medvedev’s cabinet face a negative reaction from the population. A spate of scandals involving high and middle level government officials made the situation even worse.

Others have noticed this split between President Putin and the Prime Minister Medvedev, but The Saker adds specific poll data and analysis to this phenomenon. It is worrying indeed. In the Russian government, the president is in command of the armed forces and likely foreign affairs while the prime minister is in charge of domestic affairs. Putin and Medvedev have been exchanging these roles during the past number of years. 

‘We Don’t Do Propaganda’

Click here to access article from Media Lens (Britain).

An editor of Media Lens tackles the issue of propaganda served to us by our media corporations. It's clear to me, and hopefully it is clear to you, that the capitalist ruling classes have always selected news and news reporters to support their interests of profits and power. But this type of propaganda has evolved since the fascist capitalists took over the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire beginning in Britain with the Thacherites and in the USA beginning with the Reagan administration, both of which permitted Zionists to infiltrate key government posts. 

This evolution led to the outright control of all media corporations by the CIA which were ordered to do so by their masters in the Deep State. Instead of being subject to mere advertising pressures from industrial and other commercial corporations, media corporations are now under the direct control of the Deep State as evident in the way they monolithically report the news which is filled with obvious propaganda and repeat certain themes consistently over time. The limits of dissenting views have become much narrower since the fascist capitalists, aka "neocons", "ziocons", etc, have infiltrated key areas of our government and media corporations. As I wrote in the previous link:

How this secretive complex of organizations mediate and operationalize their decisions remains a mystery. However, it must be understood that the Deep State controls all significant institutions using bribes, threats, perks, career advancements, etc., and especially rewards those who demonstrate and promote the approved themes of indoctrination and Empire propaganda.

Most American intellectuals and academics refuse to recognize this version of the Deep State as defined by me. They have either been trained not to see it due to many years of indoctrination by US universities or they deliberately avoid such a meaning because harm will come to their careers.

Recommended articles to keep you politically aware on Tuesday

• Turkey’s position on Venezuela- a Perspective from the Left by Justus Links from LeftEast. (I cannot vouch for this author, but because the article is posted in a leftist website based in Bulgaria and offered a Turkish point of view, I thought it should offer a different perspective on the Venezuelan situation as well as Turkish politics.)

• Turkish Army seeking to build new bases to block Syrian Army offensive in Idlib from AMN (based in Beirut, Lebanon).

• This Map Shows a Trillion-Dollar Reason Why US is Backing Terrorism in Western China by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.

The global struggle of teachers

Click here to access article by Jerry White from World Socialist Web Site. 

I frequently read in more independent websites that teachers are involved in labor strikes not only in many locations across the USA but in other lands across the globe. Such coverage is always omitted by our masters in their media corporations just like they refuse to cover the Gilet Juanes' ongoing protests in France for obvious reasons: the careful management of information that we are allowed to receive to protect the power and profit interests of the ruling transnational capitalist class of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. White attempts a summary of these strikes and their significance. 

Teachers have won popular support because they are fighting for fundamental rights and because all workers are facing the same conditions—declining incomes and skyrocketing living costs, precarious employment and endless attacks on social rights, including health care and pensions—which were won over generations of struggle.

The developing movement among teachers is an initial expression of a rebellion that will inevitably extend into broader layers of the working class, particularly industrial workers in key sectors such as auto, steel and other areas of manufacturing. It is a movement that will be compelled to address not only the immediate questions of wages and working conditions, but the great issues that face workers in every country—social inequality, the shredding of democratic rights, the growth of authoritarian forms of rule and the mounting danger of catastrophic war.

Watch My Speech On Assange’s Persecution For “Whistle-blowing, Wikileaks & the Future of Democracy”

Click here if you wish to access the video from its source: Australian Caitlin Johnstone's website.

I gave a speech at the Sydney Politics in the Pub event “Whistle-blowing, Wikileaks & the Future of Democracy”. Here it is if you’d like to watch (video quality isn’t great, but the audio’s fine): 

Mr Bolton’s Long Game Against Iran – Pakistan Becomes Saudi Arabia’s New Client State

Click here to access article by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. (This article requires a greater degree of knowledge of recent events in the Middle East.)

Despite the history of Crooke's service to the Anglo section of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, he continues to shed light on the Empire's covert strategies in the politically important region of Eurasia. This rather mysterious geopolitical analyst has written some solidly argued analyses of recent political events, and this is one of the best, in my opinion. Bolton appears to be continuing the David Rockefeller's protege Zbigniew Brzezinski and his influence outlined in his book The Grand Chessboard together with the current Empire's obsession with Iran. 

US Special Forces, (mostly) withdrawn from Syria, are deploying into this new Iraq military ‘hub’ in order, Trump said, to “watch Iran”. (Trump rather inadvertently ‘let the cat out of the bag’ with that comment).

The detail of the US ‘hub encirclement’ of Iran, however, rather gives the rest of Mr Bolton’s plan away: The ‘hubs’ are positioned precisely adjacent to Sunni, Kurdish, Baluch or other Iranian ethnic minorities (some with a history of insurgency). And why is it that US special forces are being assembled in the Iraqi hub? Well, these are the specialists of ‘train and assist’ programmes. These forces are attached to insurgent groups to ‘train and assist’ them to confront a sitting government. Eventually, such programmes end with safe-zone enclaves that protect American ‘companion forces’ ....

The covert element to the MESA programme, targeting Iran, is ambitious, but it will be supplemented in the next months with new rounds of economic squeeze intended to sever Iran’s oil sales (as waivers expire), and with diplomatic action, aimed at disrupting Iran’s links in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

Earlier in the article he explains what the MESA program is:

MESA (Middle East Security Alliance) maybe the new bland vehicle for a seemingly gentler Arab NATO, but its covert sub-layer is, under Mr Bolton’s guidance, as fixated on Iran, as was ‘Arab NATO’ at the outset. How would it be otherwise (given Team Trump’s obsession with Iran)?

And he continues his cogent analysis citing the recent moves and interests of all the other players in this dangerous part of the world.

The Magic Socialist

Click here to access article by C. J. Hopkins from his blog Consent Factory, Inc.

In his latest article America's master-satirist takes aim at Sen. Bernie Sanders (see the latest revelation), his very naive followers, and at the managed elections held by the capitalist ruling class:

... that’s the magic of electoral politics! The global capitalist ruling establishment, despite the fact that they own the banks and the corporations that own the government that owns the military and intelligence services, and despite the fact that they own the media, and all essential industries, and channels of trade, and are relentlessly restructuring the entire planet (which they rule with almost total impunity) to conform to their soulless neoliberal ideology, and are more than happy to unleash their militarized goons on anyone who gets in their way … despite all that, if we elect Bernie president, they will have no choice but to peacefully surrender, and transform America into a socialist wonderland!  

‘The Establishment’s Last Roll of the Dice’: What Will Become of Europe?

Click here to access article by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. (I missed this essential article because I was distracted by personal medical issues. Thankfully, Pepe Escobar alerted me to this post.)

Clearly he uses "The Establishment" (in the headline) to mean the hidden-from-your-view, transnational capitalist class that controls the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.

Crooke, who has an extensive history in Britain's CIA (MI-6) and diplomatic corps, reviews the rather dismal scene in today's Europe: the "Gilets Jaunes" mostly in France, the threats to the Italian economy, a downturn in the German economy, Brexit issues, etc, and draws some rather dramatic interpretations.

I think that you’ll find that after ‘08 people understand a lot more about finance than they did before ‘08. They may not realize it, but I think they now understand bailouts, they understand how unfair bailouts are when they’re targeted at Wall Street, as opposed to Main Street. And I think that what you’re going to see, sadly, is the Fed and the government will do what they’ve always tried to do, which is bail out Wall Street to ‘save the system’.

If you have a bad economy and you have people feeling like they’re disenfranchised and you tell them, you know what, we need to do this to save the system, well, suddenly the reaction changes. And the reaction is to hell with it, let’s burn the system to the ground.  

US Executes Planned Venezuela Violence, Pompeo Says Cuba, Nicaragua Next & US Doubles Syria Troops

Click here if you wish to access the one hour video and introductory article by Ryan Cristián directly from The Last American Vagabond.

Cristián contrasts what is happening in Venezuela to what is reported by mostly US Empire media corporations. I can't confirm every last details of actual events as presented by Cristián, but I think his version is light-years better than what the Empire's media corporations report which is propaganda disguised as reporting and ordered by fascist Empire capitalists to deceive you.

The climate emergency with Dahr Jamail

Click here if you wish to directly access a 28:27m video of an interview with Dahr Jamail on Chris Hedges' "On Contact" show that is posted on RT America. (My thanks go to a long-time activist for alerting me to this video.)

The following is an introduction to this video:

The glaciers in Alaska alone are losing an estimated 75 billion tons of ice every year. The oceans, which absorb over 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouses gases in the atmosphere, are warming and acidifying, melting the polar ice caps and resulting in rising sea-levels and oxygen-starved ocean dead zones. We await a 50-gigaton burp, or "pulse," of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost beneath the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which will release the equivalent of around two-thirds of the total carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial era. Some 150 to 200 species of plants, insects, birds and mammals are becoming extinct every 24 hours – one thousand times the "natural" or "background" rate. This pace of extinction is greater than anything the world has experienced since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Chris Hedges speaks to journalist and author, Dahr Jamail, about his new book 'The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption,' which looks at the climate emergency.

  

It's clearer now than ever before that climate destabilization has already set in. Chalk another victory to the addicts of power and profits--capitalist ruling classes all over the world (in addition to their collaborators among the highly trained, indoctrinated, and pampered upper-middle classes) who have been the main criminals perpetrating this crime. What does this mean for those who have long witnessed the destruction of our biosphere upon which so many species depend including our own human species? 

I, for one, choose to continue my fight against those who are guilty of this monstrous crime of ecocide: capitalists who have imposed on the rest of us through violence and chicanery the system of capitalism. I don't care if addiction is a disease or not because those who have succumbed to this addiction have used the most criminal means possible to commit this monstrous crime. What about you? What is your choice?

The Crisis of Science

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

I have followed Corbetts's political libertarian views (and others like him)--"the government is the cause of all problems"--for some time, and I found these people quite fascinating. Such people have been so thoroughly trained to eliminate the system that is at the root of nearly all things social and economic--capitalism--that they have problems rationalizing their understanding of such problems. Libertarians (in America) are like ostriches with their heads firmly in the sand. They simply cannot recognize the system of capitalism that underlies all things social and political (see this and this). Like gravity, capitalism in their view is simply a fact of nature. 

In this Crisis of Science podcast which he goes into at length, he often cites commercial interests as being the root cause of the corruption of science. He does refer to government agencies that collude with private interest, but stops short there. Corbett doesn't offer solutions, and says that "this isn't simply a problem of money" that is at the root of the crisis. He refers to the crisis as "having social-political and structural roots". (If he only knew!) He promises to examine various proposals to solve this crisis in the next podcast. I can't wait.

(If you are scientist or academic, I recommend this article entitled "The Commercialization of Science and the Struggle Against It" by "Denys Bondar, a young Ukrainian scientist working in one of the famous North American universities" [Princeton] from LeftEast, a website based in Bulgaria.)

Growing power: Mega-Mergers and the fight for our food system

Click here to access article by Katie Sandwell from the Transnational Institute (TNI).

Download this PDF document and learn about how mergers of agricultural corporations are leading to just a handful of corporations that exercise almost total control over what we eat. Yes, it's corporations über alles under capitalism!

Giant corporations have taken control of our food. Today, just a few companies control what we eat and how it is produced. For them, food is money: companies and their shareholders aren’t interested in what food means to the people who grow and eat it, or what farming means for the environment. They are interested in the profits they can make from it.

The situation is not good, and it is getting worse: since 2015 a number of “mega mergers” have been proposed, or taken place. Six companies controlled most of the international trade in seeds and agricultural chemicals in 2015. In the last two years, these companies have begun the process of merging and re-arranging themselves into just four colossal corporations. The larger these companies grow, the less we can control them. And the less control we have, the harder it is for us to build the kind of food system that more and more of us want: one that recognizes the value of people, respects the planet, and provides decent, dignified work.

Profits Are Up!

Click here if you wish to access the cartoon directly by Stephanie McMillan from her website.  (I thank an activist for alerting me to the latest cartoon of hers.)

The Inconvenient Truth of Modern Civilization’s Inevitable Collapse

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

This author returns from an absence of nearly a year to summarize scientific data which show clearly that we, as a human species, are in a "dire" situation. Because of his his extended absence I thought that he had given up his long effort to warn humans of this threat. However, he seems at one point to hold out some hope for a future of humans if only we can reduce our birth rate.

By far the most effective way to reduce future emissions and resource consumption is to reduce human birth rates, yet the global population is still increasing at about 90 million people per year despite the geographic shift in fertility rates.

This "effective way" is not effective at all which he readily admits. I am not a scientist, but I can read, and have read many scientific articles on the subject. I now think there is very little chance that humans can survive. Our atmosphere has become so loaded with carbon that there is a baked-in effect that will increase global warming for many decades even if we stopped completely all carbon emitting now. But I don't know that, and nobody knows that for sure. 

Hence, in the meantime we must use the most effective means to combat this threat by ending the rule of a tiny segment of humans and their system which has caused so much devastation--and not only wrecking our biosphere. We have seen disastrous global wars in the 20th century followed by endless wars so far in the 21st century. We have also seen entire populations uprooted and migrating to other areas of the globe to escape such disasters. We have also seen the growth of concentrated wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people who use this wealth to increase their power over our lives. The obvious solution is to rid ourselves of their system of capitalism!

Europe pays the price of a US decision: where will European ISIS go?

Click here to access article by Kuwaiti-born independent journalist Elijah Magnier from his blog.

Another independent journalist discloses another dirty and very open secret of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Anyone who refuses to believe the fictional realities as presented by the Empire's corporate media already knows this dirty secret because there have been hundreds of reports from independent sources to confirm it. Yes, the Empire and its allies (Saudi Arabia and its satellites) have emptied their prisons of deviants, trained them to become terrorists, outfitted them with weapons and brand-spanking new Toyota trucks, and launched them into Syria to destabilize the government. Now that ISIS, the Empire's terrorist mercenary army, has been defeated, almost nobody wants them. This poses a quandary for most members of the Empire and their allies. The Empire also used Kurds for this purpose and now they are abandoning them. There are no crimes that our capitalist masters will find unacceptable if it serves their interests of power and profits.

Wall Street’s Banksters Are Clandestinely Trading the “Digital Gangster” Stock of Facebook

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

Martens was referring to this report issued by a committee of the British Parliament which referred to Facebook as a "digital gangster" which had little effect of the price of Facebook's stock.

Yesterday, the U.K. Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee released a 108-page report based on its 18-month investigation into digital disinformation campaigns that provided granular details on Facebook’s thuggish business model, inferring at one point that the U.S. should investigate the company under its Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

The report minced few words about Facebook or its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, writing that the company and its management were “ ‘digital gangsters’ in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law.”

And, she goes on to cite other historical examples of corporations that have been legally convicted of law violations, but whose stock has greatly increased. The lesson of this story is that getting rich "by hook or by crook" is perfectly acceptable in today's amoral capitalist world. Hence, all sociopaths are attracted to the world of today's capitalism like never before. They have infiltrated every institution and are in control of every institution. We are now seeing the results all around us in terms of acceptance of extreme inequality, imperialist wars, and the lack of concern about climate destabilization.

Bernie ‘Looked the Other Way’ on Wasserman Schultz, Florida Election Rigging

Click here if you wish to access the video and brief introduction from 21st Century Wire.

The is abundant evidence that election rigging has been rife in South Florida’s notoriously corrupt Broward County. Former Florida congressional candidate Tim Canova exposed the DNC election fiddling through a series of independent investigations, following his challenge to former disgraced Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Talk Show host Jimmy Dore interviews Canova about the controversy, and also explains how Bernie Sanders remained quiet on the matter in order to placate the Democratic Party elite. Watch:

Counterpunch Shadowboxes and Loses

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from his blog Behind the Curtain. 

Another very astute observer of political power events in today's capitalist class rule has been rejected and disappeared by the editors of CounterPunch, one the oldest online, "alternative", American blogs. I have long held doubts about their dedication to truth when the truth leads one to question the very foundations of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire: the ruling capitalist classes and their obsession with power and profits.

He attacks the editors of CounterPunch as "gatekeepers" after he describes the way that corporate media's use highly trained people who will follow orders by presenting only news, information, and analysis that serve the interests of the capitalist ruling class:

In the fight for truth in the public arena, similar subterfuges occur.

To battle honestly in the open forum, to argue to and fro squarely, is often prevented in advance by eliminating an opponent’s voice from the debate.  This is the typical method used by the corporate mass media that stack the deck with sycophants and refuse dissidents a place to voice their ideas.

Then there is the masquerade of fighting an opponent who is really a collaborator and benefactor, whose punches one counters in a game of shadow boxing meant to convince the audience that the fight is real and you are on their side.  Some alternative media use this technique because they are gatekeepers for the power elite.

How One of America’s Premier Data Monarchs is Funding a Global Information War and Shaping the Media Landscape

Click here to access article by Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal from Mint Press News. 

Others have written articles on the insidious influence of billionaire Pierre Omidyar, but this piece provides an in-depth examination of his influence over disinformation about our world that ordinary people of the USA and beyond receive. But even these crimes are excelled by his efforts to organize and fund information and analysis organizations that purport to be progressive. Such organizations tend to attract honest journalists in order to limit and shape independent reporting. Ordinary people of the world are no match for the skills and expertise that billionaires are able to purchase to promote their interests of profit and power and the monster Empire that they have created.

Omidyar’s political empire consists of a web of organizations overseen by its center of administration: the Omidyar Group. Each outfit appears to be an independent entity with its own staff and directors. Taken together, however, these organizations pursue a mission that reflects the vision of the billionaire behind it.   

Johnny Versus The News Man

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

What a beautiful fantasy! Well, if reality is sometimes too distasteful, we can always resort to fantasies.

... one day the News Man announced that Freedomocracy was going to War. All other recourse had failed with the Evil Dictator, he said, and everyone receiving a notice on their pocket Screens was to report to their Enlistment Stations immediately.

But nobody went. Everyone refused to fight this new War, and everyone refused to support the people who were trying to start it. The tangle of lies fell away completely, and everyone saw what was really happening with clear eyes. The people rose up together, and soon even the police joined them, and it wasn’t long before the News Man appeared on the Screen for the last time.

Then the people began creating a country which really works for them instead of keeping them poor and tricked all the time.

Who Rules the Anglosphere?

Click here to access article by Moti Assani from Veterans Today. (Updated on 2/18/2019 at 8:44 AM to add a clip from The Jimmy Dore website.)

The author rounds up a lot of observations about what a number of people know: there is an invisible government that controls the puppets of our official government behind the curtain. This super-secret group goes by various names: deep state, shadow government, oligarchs, etc. (He prefers "Controllers".) Nissani states the obvious, that is, what's obvious to most astute observers:

Humans have always known that water exists, even though they were often ignorant of its constituent parts. The same goes for the Invisible Government: Truth-seekers have excellent reasons to believe it exists, although information about its internal structure and the identity of its members remains as elusive as they are.

Read what he discovers about this very elusive bunch who control so much of our lives. As I learned many years ago from Jim O’Reilly, a retired banker who now lives in Denver, the rich don't merely seek to accumulate more money for itself, but they seek the power that concentrated wealth gives them.

You may be interested in another article of Nissani, the title of which is essentially a corollary of this one entitled "Why voting in the US may be an exercise in self-delusion" from The Greanville Post. He goes on to elaborate on the "Controllers", or the Deep State. Another video that may interest you is from The Jimmy Dore website that illustrates US corrupt elections.

Reshaping the Middle East: why the West should stop its Interventions (Part 2)

Click here to access article by Elijah J Magnier from his blog.

This Kuwaiti-born independent journalist provides a summary of the past decades of US, Israeli, and Saudi interventions in the Middle East, and the consequences are not good for the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. He reaches several conclusions after he poses the question: So, what has this global intervention brought about?

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: “The Inconvenient Truth” Behind Youth Cooptation

Click here to access series of articles by Cory Morningstar with Forrest Palmer reposted on Deep Green Resistance News Service. 

I don't pay much attention to corporate media sources because they are all about deceptions, and instead I focus on news and analysis by reliable independent sources. So, I occasionally miss the scams being committed by our masters in the capitalist ruling class. This post is a result of receiving this morning an article from Climate Code Red (Australian website) which lauded Greta Thunberg and her followers. I knew that Morningstar and Palmer have been running a series of articles on her backers (incidentally, I haven't seen any other exposé of this fake operation other than the series run by Morningstar and Palmer), but I was discouraged by the tome-length articles that they, as usual, write and post. However, this morning's post by Climate Code Red, which has previously run excellent pro-environmental articles, had me concerned. They were obviously taken in by our masters in the capitalist Empire.

As a result of this experience, I admit I didn't read all of the series by Morningstar and Palmer, but I scanned them together with many other articles which supported the astonishing rise of teenager Greta Thunberg as an environmental celebrity. After hours of research I reached a conclusion: there is another sheep-herding operation going on to shepherd those concerned about climate destabilization into the chute that leads--well, maybe not to the slaughterhouse of managed elections as Bernie Sanders did--but to the control and diffusion of the growing worldwide concern about the obvious signs of weather extremes--the first signs of climate destabilization.

At this stage we can only point to the supporters behind this celebrity status of Thunberg and the many other manifestations of this sheep-herding operation. Morningstar and Palmer provide an exhaustive (exhausting?) list of the promoters. The following is only a sample of what the authors found: worldwide coverage from media corporations, and their capitalist backers have managed to have Thunberg appear at the UN Climate Conference; at Ted Talks, at Davos, and they have used her celebrity status to spawn other organizations supposedly concerned about climate destabilization: The Green New Deal (Democratic Party), We Don't Have Time (movement), Sierra Club's Sunrise Movement, and NGO supporters like the World Resources Institute. The articles goes into considerable detail about the capitalist associations of the directors and backers. 

It's patently clear what is going on. The hoi poiloi (ordinary people) are once again being played for fools. In contrast to what we've seen in the past: devastating world wars, but this time it will result in human extinction.