How corporate forces are lobbying for a coup in Venezuela

Click here if you wish to access the video report by Thomas Hedges directly from The Grayzone.

This Grayzone post, which includes a transcript, by Hedges reveals the backgrounds of the leadership of this well-connected gang that took-over the Venezuelan Embassy on May 17 from the protestors who were given permission by the Venezuelan government to enter and protect their embassy.

 

Recommended articles for Monday, June 10, 2019

• As Developing Countries Reject Plastic Waste Exports, Wealthy Nations Seek Solutions by Yves Smith from her blog Naked Capitalism.

• Syria - Western Media Glorification Of Syrian Jihadist Is A Sign That The War Is Far From Its End by Bernhard from his blog Moon of Alabama (Germany).

• More Evidence US Armed Syria Terrorists as Trump Pleads Ceasefire by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• Syria and War Propaganda: Robert Stuart vs the BBC by Susan Dirgham and Rick Sterling from 21st Century Wire. 

• The Downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17: Mahathir Opens a “Ukraine Political Pandora’s Box” by F. William Engdahl from Global Research.

Trump Is Not Extricating Himself on Iran. He Is Being ‘Dug in’

Click here to access article by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

This former employee of MI-6 (the British counterpart to the US's CIA) well honed geopolitical skills argues that Trump is "being 'dug-in'". He doesn't specify who is digging him into a war with Iran, but it's clear to me that the Deep State, a board of directors for the US ruling capitalist class, is doing the digging. If Crooke is correct, it's bad news for the world. 

He is essentially arguing that the Deep State has maneuvered Trump into a path that leads inexorably to war with Iran or Trump will have to settle for a humiliating defeat. Either way, the Deep State wins. I think that Crooke's argument is quite sound--what do you think?

Referring to all the confusing moves by the Trump administration, Crooke writes:

Is it all bluster? Will Trump go all the way with his threats and pressures – but ultimately pull out, just short of war? That seems to be the general consensus today; but Team Trump’s view of Iran seems based in so many misconceptions, layered on other misconceptions, and on intelligence that amounts to no more than Mossad’s assessment of Iranian future intentions.

The consensus on ‘no conflict’ unfortunately, may turn out to have been overly sanguine. This is not because Trump consciously desires war, but because the hawks surrounding him, particularly Bolton, are painting him into a corner – from which he must either back down, or double down, if Iran does not first capitulate.

And here is the point: the main Trump misconception may be that he does believe that Iran wants, and ultimately, ‘will seek a deal’. Really?

Israel’s Attack on The USS Liberty: An Act of War, A False Flag, A Gross Betrayal

Click here to access article by Craig McKee from Global Research.

Stephen Gowans' excellent new book entitled Israel: A beachhead in the Middle East reveals the context of the wider post WWII by the European nations and the USA to resist the efforts of the more independent Arab countries to possess and manage their own valuable oil and gas resources for the benefit of their countries instead of serving the British, American, and other European investors.

This Six-Day War was a crucial war that led to the decisive crushing of the influence of Gamal Nasser, President of Egypt, who became a hero to the Arabs who struggled to gain control of their oil from the colonial powers and the Americans. As such, the brief war also cemented the support by US capitalists in the emerging US Empire for Zionist Israel. 

As Gowans revealed in his heavily documented book:

In March 1967, tensions grew between Syria and Israel over their demilitarized zone separating the two states. The Soviets warned Nasser that Israel was preparing an attack on his ally. In April, the Jordanians and Saudis, taking their instruction from the CIA, accused Nasser of cowardice. He talked big, they said, but his inaction belied his words. He was nothing but a paper tiger. Their intention was to goad the Arab leader into attacking Israel, or lose face before his adoring Arab supporters if the didn't. 

Nasser built up his troops near the border between Israel and Egypt, and the Israelis went on the attack. The USS Liberty, equipped with power intelligence capabilities, was stationed near the battle-zone to monitor what was going. When the Israeli Army, equipped by the Western powers, launched their attack on nearby Arab countries and were decisive in their quick victory over the poorly equipped Arab nations like Egypt and Syria, the USS Liberty was a liability--they knew too much--and had to be destroyed by Israel. The directors of the emerging US Empire immediately recognized the value of Israel in helping to put down any resistance to their control of the valuable resources of the Middle East. And, as they say, the rest is history.

For an accurate description of the attempted sinking of the USS Liberty by the Israeli Air Force, I recommend my post from 2017 entitled Remembering the USS Liberty.

Washington’s “Tiananmen” Lies Begin to Fray

Click here to access article by Joseph Thomas from New Eastern Outlook. 

Thomas writes about the fake news and propaganda issued by Empire sources concerning what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Thanks to the rise of independent media and to Wikileaks, both of which Empire agents are trying to shut down or censor, we are learning about reality which portrays the Empire's machinations to be the source of so many evils in the world.

He writes:

Washington and its allies across the Western World have been particularly eager in observing this year’s anniversary of their version of the 1989 Tiananmen protests.

It has become an opportunity to add political pressure atop economic pressure already being exerted on Beijing by Washington in its bid to encircle and contain China’s rise.

This pressure comes mainly through the Western media.

But the monopoly the US once enjoyed over the flow of global information is coming to an end. The more attention the US tries to draw to certain events, the more objective scrutiny others apply resulting in growing, irreversible damage to some of Washington’s most valuable propaganda narratives. 

Pompeo's Moment of Truth on Venezuela Recorded; Tell Us What's Really Happening!

Click here to access a post featuring a podcast entitled "The Critical Hour", a podcast by Wilmar Leon from Sputnik News. (Updated at 9:40 AM CT.)

I was impressed by the sophistication of the guests he had on his program to discuss three issues: the failure of the Empire to remove Maduro's administration from Venezuela (roughly from 0:00-25:30), the economic warfare imposed against China and threats of such recently directed against Mexico (roughly 25:30-44:00), and the aggressive campaign against journalists especially in Australia, but also in other places in the Empire (44:17-56:00). 

I believe that these segments illustrate my thesis that the bumbling Trump administration, although being pressed by the neoliberal directors of the Empire (aka "Deep State"), are reacting desperately and recklessly to recent setbacks by concocting uninformed counter-attacks in their quest to preserve the Empire's domination of the world. See if you agree.

I continue to be impressed by Russian news and analysis sources whether funded by the Russian government or function independently: Sputnik, RT, New Eastern Outlook, and Strategic Culture Foundation.

The global war on journalism

Click here to access article by Mike Head from World Socialist Web Site. 

By targeting journalists, as well as the individuals leaking the damning information, the Australian government is directly following the lead of the Trump administration’s charging of Assange, a journalist and publisher, with 17 counts under the US Espionage Act, for which he faces life imprisonment and possibly the death penalty.

The Trust Project: Big Media and Silicon Valley’s Weaponized Algorithms Silence Dissent

Click here to access article by Whitney Webb from MintPress News. (This post was by Caren, an activist from Titanic Lifeboat Academy. She kindly offered to write the introduction for me when my computer was not functioning yesterday.  As you can see, it is much better than I could have done.)

Whitney Webb's exhaustive examination of intelligence agencies' infiltrating and dominating capitalist mainstream "news" is the latest effort to expose this symbiosis. From Carl Bernstein's 1977 Rolling Stone cover story, to Der Spiegel journalist Udo Ulfkotte's 2017 book which has been fully censored in the West, to William Arkin's ("Top Secret America") year-end email which Glenn Greenwald recapped January 3, 2019 in The Intercept, to the entire career and martyrdom of Julian Assange, valiant attempts have been made to alert a sleeping public to the fact that money/power will protect itself by controlling news, what passes for "truth" and "reality," and the behavior of the people who consume both.  Webb's article focuses on their latest weapon designed to make thinking easier by doing it for you:  a refined, Orwellian-titled Prop-or-Not upgrade called The Trust Project.

Superbugs in the Anthropocene: A Profit-Driven Plague

Click here to access article by Ian Angus from Monthly Review.

The subject of superbugs is not new, but this author explains why such antibiotic-resistant bugs have appeared. 

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a global health crisis driven by a pharmaceutical and health care system that puts profit before people. In addition to devastating climate change, the Anthropocene may be defined by epidemics that medicine cannot cure.

But this was not inevitable. As Angus further explains:

Those who hailed the first antibiotics as miracle drugs were not wrong. What those chemicals could have been was a way to work with nature, to use natural processes to overcome diseases that had plagued us for thousands of years. Used with appropriate humility and careful stewardship, in conjunction with a global drive to eradicate the conditions that cause infectious diseases, penicillin and its successors could have been boons to humanity for centuries. But that would have required a radically different economy and society.

With ruling capitalist classes' obsession to obtain profits instead of human welfare, such a result was inevitable along with all the other assaults on our habitat that has produced the threats of climate destabilization, environmental pollution, and species extinctions.

Capitalism always operates in the short term and its defenders always insist that new technology will solve any problems that might arise. For several decades, antibiotics seemed to confirm that superstition—for every drug that stopped working, new ones were discovered. But that did not last. The early discoveries were low-hanging fruit and searching the higher branches has been hard and largely unsuccessful.

Mainstream economists like to claim that the market solves all—if there is a need, customer demand will produce solutions. But today, when bacteria have found ways to resist every available antibiotic, most pharmaceutical companies have abandoned the search for others. Not because new antibiotics would not be profitable, but because they would not be profitable enough. Big Pharma makes double-digit profits from drugs it sells for thousands of dollars a dose to patients who must take them frequently for many years. Antibiotics just do not fit that business model.

Video: “Plutocracy V: Subterranean Fire”. Capitalism and the Historical Trampling of the Working Class

Click here to access this article by Kim Petersen and a nearly two hour film that portrays accurately the true history of workers in the USA. (This post has been forwarded to me by an alert activist.)

This history has been expunged from history classes in public schools and probably most private schools. If you want to recover what our capitalist masters have censored from our worker history, you simply must view this film.

Articles recommended for Wednesday, June 5, 2019

• Unstable polar glaciers lose ice ever faster by Tim Radford from Climate News Network.

• [Small investor] Americans Should Be Gravely Concerned with this Wall Street Court Case by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their blog Wall Street on Parade.

• Media Gloats About Censoring Opinions of 37% of Americans by Ted Rall from The Unz Review.

• More Police Raids As War On Journalism Escalates Worldwide by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her blog. 

• Rachel Maddow's Full Meltdown Over Julian Assange! featuring satiric comedian Lee Camp on RT (via YouTube) ridiculing America's favorite mainstream pundit, Rachel Maddow.

Dr. McPherson explains AME at Open Secrets Book Store, San Rafael, CA April 23, 2019

Listen via YouTube his nearly 82 minute address and some questions that he responds to:

The ecosocialist path to 1.5°C sustainability

Click here to access article by Richard Smith from Real-World Economics Review Blog. (I wrote up an extensive commentary on this article, but lost it somehow. This is the reason for this rather late post.)

Here is the latest article by Smith who has co-founded System Change not Climate Change and whose work entitled "Capitalism and the Destruction of Life on Earth: Six Theses on Saving the Humans" forms one the basic foundations for my blog (the other is Power and Powerlessness by Susan Rosenthal). 

Because Dr. Richard Smith is a specialist in the physical sciences and having been educated at an American university, he is limited in his understanding of what it takes to overthrow a well-entrenched social-economic system and the ruling class that benefits from it. If after reading his article, you still believe that the ruling capitalist class will accept his proposals, I have a bridge to sell you (def.). 

I am convinced that our ruling masters have been so addicted to their system which has delivered to them so much power and wealth that they are completely unfit to accept such proposals and act on them. The dire environmental threats we are now facing were well-known to them in the 1970s, and since then our masters have only promised to do something much like an alcoholic who promises to quit drinking (alcoholic beverages). It was clear to many activists in the 1970s that only a revolution could save humans; and I held out hope that the events in the 1960s and 70s (the numerous assassinations, the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, Civil Rights Movement, etc) would enable a revolutionary movement to form and grow. Obviously this did not happen. 

Then I began a blog 10 years ago posting articles that I imagined might alarm people sufficiently to create a revolutionary movement. That did not happen. All we have now are the Extinction Rebellion and the Green New Deal movements; and as revealed by Cory Morningstar in her excellent series entitled "The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg", these movements are led by capitalists or their agents to insure that the rising chorus of environmental concern does not interfere with "business as usual", and hopefully will provide even greater opportunities for more products, such as electric cars, in order to reap ever greater profits and power.

As I have recently quoted Karl Rove, a prime influential in the Bush Jr. administration, it reveals the secret to the capitalist success to maintain their rule in spite of the fact that it can only end in the extinction as humans and many other species:

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Rove means by this quote that the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire has created an updated version of fascism that includes the ubiquitous control of all significant ideological institutions by infiltrating agents in all media corporations, academia, and even Hollywood to create our understanding of the world--a comprehensive false consciousness. Now most people are led around like dumb sheep into the chutes of nuclear war annihilation or into the nightmare of climate destabilization. Honestly, when I look at all the facts, they won! But, as we shall soon see, it is a Pyrrhic victory.

The Dismemberment Of Yugoslavia 20 Years On

Click here to access article by R. S. Ahthion (he is clearly British) from Medium.

Little did the American people, who were busy amusing themselves with distractions, know that this well-doused in self-serving propaganda campaign to justify the attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 by using NATO's air force, would be the start of much more aggressive campaigns in other countries and to secure their control of the energy-rich Middle East. (But first our masters had to arrange for the 9/11 project to be accomplished to put ordinary Americans in a fighting mood.) He continues on to reveal the hypocrisies and lies of the justifying propaganda campaign.

Later Ahthion argues that "market socialism" and Yugoslavia's ties to the neoliberal institutions like the IMF and World Bank weakened and prepared the way for this nation's destruction by the Empire's army, NATO. (He refers to the Empire using the bland phrase "western nations".) He also argues that after the Soviet Union disintegrated, the directorate of the capitalist Empire ("western nations") arrogantly began more aggressive campaigns to rule the world. They no longer needed Yugoslavia to counter the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia's brand of socialism had to be destroyed. And, as they say, the rest is history.

US-Iran: Inverted Reality, Real War

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

In an article packed with important links that support his thesis that the USA is engaging in actions that will lead to a real war while serving up propaganda that is loaded with lies. Well, as a well-acknowledged imperialist advisor to Bush, Jr., Karl Rove, once admitted that the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire was in the propaganda business of creating realities while pursing the domination of the world:

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

In other, more succinct words, as a dominant actor in the capitalist world, and their ubiquitous control of nearly all media, our imperial masters will create realities that powerless critics can only study and react to.

The Unrelenting State

Click here to access article by Craig Murray (British) from his blog.

I have been led to believe that the Empire's tenable and increasing tenuous position is expressing itself in the controllers of this Empire to increase their desperate attempts via their disinformation agents to crush those who, like Assange, have broken through their fabricated "realities" and published accounts online that totally deconstructed their "realities".

Signs of Assange's decreasing health while in the custody of the British government may be a perfect example of the desperation that is driving governments of the Empire to use extreme measures. Murray appears convinced that this is the case with Assange.

I confess to feeling an amount of personal relief after his arrest that at least he would now get proper medical treatment. However there now seems to be no intention to provide that and indeed since he has been in Belmarsh his health problems have accelerated. I witnessed enough of the British state’s complicity in torture to know that this may be more than just the consequence of unintended neglect. That the most lucid man I know is now not capable of having a rational conversation is extremely alarming.

Brainwashing in Action: Pence Hails Virtue of ‘Certain War’

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

In an address to West Point military graduates, US Vice President Mike Pence told them they will one day fight for America. “It’s a virtual certainty,” said Pence who was swelling with pride as he spoke, rather than lamenting.

Well, at least, he is being candid.

Cunningham goes on to expose Empire propaganda for what it is: a deceptive and deceitful cover for the outright fascist commitment to the use of force to attain ever greater power and profits. 

France's Yellow Vests, State Violence and The Way Forward

Click here to access an 1:37:01 interview with "three-time French Presidential candidate, Jacques Cheminade, President of the French party Solidarité et Progrès", conducted by Dr. Kirk Meighoo (Trinidad and Tobago). (Updated at 1:10 PM CT)

I am posting this as a way of acquanting you with another independent thinker, Dr. Meighoo, whose interview with "The Sake" I posted today. But, in addition, I think the views of Jacques Cheminade, as well as Dr. Meighoo, are also insightful regarding the ongoing Yellow Vests protests and general issues facing most ordinary people today. On the subject of global warming and some other subjects, I obviously don't agree with the two.

Kirk Meighoo interviews the Saker on The “Russia Question” and the “New Cold War”

Click here if you wish to access the interview directly from "The Saker's" blog, A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. The interview is conducted by Kirk Meighoo (of Trinidad and Tobago and you can access his blog here), an admirer of Andrei Raevsky ("The Saker"). Meighoo succeeds in eliciting the fundamental views and background that has shaped the uniquely independent views and geopolitical analysis that Raevsky has expressed on various major issues over the past decade. I particularly want to draw attention to details provided by Raevsky at roughly 2:40m, 19:05m, and 41:20m. 

Let me be clear that I always don't agree with his views, but I respect him as an independent thinker. I find it strange that he clings to the culture and religion of Orthodox Christianity.

I found it to be well worth my time and effort to listen to the entire 1:06:39 interview. 

 

Articles recommended for Friday, May 31, 2019

• “The X Agenda”: what does XR actually stand for? from Winter Oak (Britain).

• Assange hospitalized, ‘dagger in journalist hearts’ a 5:56m video featuring George Galloway, MP, commenting on the recent news of the persecution of Assange. Produced by RT via YouTube.

The attorney of WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange’s has revealed that he was too ill to appear in a video chat for his extradition hearing. Assange has spent the past seven weeks at Belmarsh prison, where his health has continued to deteriorate. The WikiLeaks founder faces extradition to the US over “espionage” charges dating back to 2010. Former UK MP George Galloway joins In Question to break this all down.

• Alberta, Canada Smoke Near Me: Air Quality Maps & Forecasts from Heavy. 

Aren't the wildfires early this year? I was wondering why the skies out my window in southern Minnesota were gray when the day was supposed to be sunny. But having turned on a TM weather station, I learned that the residents in the area were warned to stay inside because of the polluted air.

UN Says Assange Tortured: Join Us Live Online at 4pm

Click here to access article from Consortium News. 

Julian Assange is in Belmarsh Prison hospital after his Swedish lawyer said he was too ill to carry on a conversation. Join us live for a discussion of the latest.

The 32nd webcast vigil for Julian Assange can be seen here starting on Friday at 4 pm US Eastern time [3 PM CT, 2 PM MT, and 1 PM PT], 9 PM in London, 10 pm in Europe, and 6 am Saturday in Australia for a three-hour online discussion with hosts Elizabeth Vos and Joe Lauria.  [my link insertion]

Washington’s Silent Weapon for Not-so-quiet Wars. “A World Full of Dollars”, A 2019 Global Economic Crisis

Click here to access article, a re-post from November of 2018, by F. William Engdahl from Global Research.

It's clear that capitalist ruling classes who control the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire don't want a shooting war that would destroy much of their assets, but choose to defend their Empire's domination of the world by waging economic war using their control of the world's primary currency, the US dollar. 

I think the directors of this capitalist Empire are desperately trying to find some way to maintain their control over the world and this is another way. But, will it work? And, what will be the consequences for ordinary people of the world who always suffer when capitalists inevitably resort to war as a means to secure their domination?

Engdahl doesn't report this, but instead places emphasis on the economies of Eurasia if the Empire wins:

If Washington succeeds on November 4 in cutting all Iran oil exports, world (dollar) oil prices could soar above 100 dollars, adding dramatically to the developing world dollar shortage. This is war by other means. The Fed dollar strategy is acting now as a “silent weapon” for not so quiet wars. If it continues it could deal a serious setback to the growing independence of Eurasian countries around the China New Silk Road and the Russia-China-Iran alternative to the dollar system. The role of the dollar as lead global reserve currency and the ability of the Federal Reserve to control it, is a weapon of massive destruction and a strategic pillar of American superpower control. Are the nations of Eurasia or even the ECB [European Central Bank] ready to deal effectively?  [my insertion]

I seriously doubt that the Empire will win this war of desperation. But what is not in doubt in my mind is that we humans are doomed anyway through the machinations of our capitalist masters and our failure to take power away from them. That means to deprive them of the ownership and control of our economy and most of the world's economies.

One true prophet of our failure dates back to the 1960s and 70s--Phil Ochs. Examine his statements that often made it into his songs about our future. He is said to have committed suicide, but informed people dispute that. Could his death be another illustration, among many, of Sen. Chuck Schumer's warning that those who cross the CIA, the Empire's secret organization has many ways to punish them?  

Global Poverty: How the Rich Eat the Poor and the World...[and] The Big Lies

Click here to access article by Prof. John McMurtry re-posted on Global Research (based in Canada).

It isn't often that we find modern day oracles whose perceptions reveal the truth about our existence. Maybe McMurtry was one who three years ago saw what few people saw: rich capitalists eating the poor and the world (the environment). But apparently he hasn't given up because I notice in his bio at the end of the article that he sees a cure in his most recent book entitled The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure. I, on the other hand, am convinced that "The Big Lies" (of the agents of capitalism) won, and now it is too late to prevent our and many life forms from going the way of the Dodo bird. 

We learn from Wikipedia that "It is estimated that more than 99% of all species that ever existed on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are extinct." Why should anyone believe that human species are exempt from a similar fate (excepting those whose religion in spite of science place a special exemption on humans)? The well-trained, indoctrinated, and well paid media apologists employed by our drugged-out capitalist masters are actively trying to convince us that this threat lies in the distant future and that our masters will come up with all kinds of technological fixes to prevent this from happening. Do you believe this "Big Lie" too? 

Escaping extinction through paradigm shift

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from his blog Insurge Intelligence.

This British commentator senses that something is wrong with "the system", but only names it one time in this essay, and then identifies this system with all kinds of qualifiers: it's "contemporary neoliberal capitalism-as-we-know-it". So, one can infer that capitalism is not the problem per se (def.), but it is that we have strayed from the wonderful system our "Founding Fathers" left for us. 

Maybe I am being too cynical, but I can't help it. These soft critics of capitalism were "educated", or rather trained by the system and amply rewarded; and now that it is too late, they sound the alarm and say that we need to escape "extinction through a paradigm shift", a cleaned-up intellectualization of the messy concept of revolution. I expect we will see a lot more of this type of hand-wringing in the very challenging days ahead.

Articles recommended for Thursday, May 30, 2019.

• Climate Capitalists -- this is actually a collection of relevant articles posted on Winter Oak, a British based website.

• Amid grave concerns for his health, Assange transferred to Belmarsh Prison medical wing by Oscar Grenfell from World Socialist Web Site.

• Mecca summits: Saudi Arabia is using holy sites to score political goals by Madawi al-Rasheed from Middle East Eye. 

• China’s Media Wars: Not Your Average David Anymore by Grete Mautner from New Eastern Outlook.

•  How Google creates your reality -- from the News with Rick Sanchez on RT via YouTube.

• The Impact of the European Parliament Election on Iran’s Foreign Policy by Mani Mehrabi from United World (based in Turkey).

Between the Devil and the Green New Deal

Click here to access article by Jasper Bernes, the Managing Editor of Commune, from Commune. 

The author provides us with a comprehensive analysis of the Green New Deal (GND) proposed by reformers, and its potential for solving the climate crisis that is presently threatening to destroy humans and many other species. He shows convincingly, in my opinion, that the GND is a vague illusory promise to not only solve the climate crisis, but to provide universal health care, and full employment. Thus, it sounds like a campaign promise that promises everything to everyone. Further, he claims that saving capitalism and saving humans is a lie. Here are the main passages that exhibit his reasoning:

To replace current US energy consumption with renewables, you’d need to devote at least 25–50 percent of the US landmass to solar, wind, and biofuels, according to the estimates made by Vaclav Smil, the grand doyen of energy studies. Is there room for that and expanding human habitation? For that and pasture for a massive meat and dairy industry? For that and the forest we’d need to take carbon out of the air? Not if capitalism keeps doing the thing which it can’t not keep doing—grow. The law of capitalism is the law of more—more energy, more stuff, more materials. It introduces efficiencies only to more effectively despoil the planet. There is no solution to the climate crisis which leaves capitalism’s compulsions to growth intact. And this is what the Green New Deal, a term coined by that oily neoliberal, Thomas Friedman, doesn’t address. It thinks you can keep capitalism, keep growth, but remove the deleterious consequences. The death villages are here to tell you that you can’t. No roses will bloom on that bush.

It’s easy to get lost in the weeds here and lose sight of the essential. In each of these scenarios, on each of these sad, warming planets, the Green New Deal fails because capitalism. Because, in capitalism, a small class of owners and managers, in competition with itself, finds itself forced to make a set of narrow decisions about where to invest and in what, establishing prices, wages, and other fundamental determinants of the economy. Even if these owners wanted to spare us the drowned cities and billion migrants of 2070, they could not. They would be undersold and bankrupted by others. Their hands are tied, their choices constrained, by the fact that they must sell at the prevailing rate or perish. It is the class as a whole that decides, not its individual members. This is why the sentences of Marxists (and Marx) so often treat capital as agent rather than object. The will towards relentless growth, and with it increasing energy use, is not chosen, it is compelled, a requirement of profitability where profitability is a requirement of existence.

To those who believe that the GND can serve as a "transitional program", he writes: 

If you build a party and other institutions around the idea of solving climate change within capitalism, do not be surprised when some large fraction of that party resists your attempt to convert it into a revolutionary organ. The history of socialist and communist parties is reason for caution. Even after the leaders of the Second International betrayed its members by sending them to slaughter each other in the First World War, and even after a huge fraction split to form revolutionary organizations in the wake of the Russian Revolution, many continued to support it, out of habit and because it had built a thick network of cultural and social structures to which they were bound by a million and one ties. Beware that, in pursuit of the transitional program, you do not build up the forces of your future enemy.

He then reaches this rational conclusion:

We cannot keep things the same and change everything. We need a revolution, a break with capital and its killing compulsions, though what that looks like in the twenty-first century is very much an open question. A revolution that had as its aim the flourishing of all human life would certainly mean immediate decarbonization, a rapid decrease in energy use for those in the industrialized global north, no more cement, very little steel, almost no air travel, walkable human settlements, passive heating and cooling, a total transformation of agriculture, and a diminishment of animal pasture by an order of magnitude at least. All of this is possible, but not if we continue to shovel one half of all the wealth produced on the planet into the maw of capital, not if we continue to sacrifice some fraction of each generation by sending them into the pits, not if we continue to allow those whose only aim is profit to decide how we live.

For now, a revolution is not on the horizon. We’re stuck between the devil and the green new deal and I can hardly blame anyone for committing themselves to the hope at hand rather than ambient despair. Perhaps work on legislative reforms will mean the difference between the unthinkable and the merely unbearable. But let’s not lie to each other.

But what if revolution were possible to overturn the capitalist rule and restore ordinary humans to exercise control over their planet, and these people became instantly highly informed instead of dumbed-down as to the threat of global warming? Well, as McPherson argues, we would still have, what has become known as, McPherson's Paradox to deal with. 

The latter explains that in addition to spewing greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, into our atmosphere, we have also spewed other substances that act as dimmer of solar radiation that is heating up our planet Earth. So if we had the technological means to stop the heating of our planet through geoengineering, which we don't, we could easily accelerate the global warming crisis. This is a synopsis of this paradox. But I should let the biologist and generalist (of the physical sciences) Guy McPherson explain this paradox in his own words:

The only problem I have with McPherson's analysis is his targeting "civilization" as the culprit that has led humans to this critical point. McPherson's has been trained in the physical sciences, but his weaknesses in the liberal arts is evident. He doesn't know of the history comprising the last 10,000 years of one ruling class after another dominating the rest of their societies, and likewise the efforts of ordinary people both successful and unsuccessful at eliminating one ruling class after another. However, revolutionary efforts at eliminating the rule of capitalists has apparently been too much for ordinary humans to accomplish. The latest and most dominant transnational ruling class, the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, has used the advancements of knowledge to avert any further revolution. But in their obsessive concern to amass profits and power, they have destroyed the habitat that supports human life and that of many other species.

Civilization has a broad concept has at its core meaning a desire to understand our human existence. To suggest that we could have saved ourselves by remaining ignorant and scrounging around looking for plants that we can dig up and animals to kill in order to eat and survive is completely absurd.  

Articles recommended for Tuesday, May 28, 2019

• Perry’s Attack on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 and the Empire’s Lost Grip on Reality by Matthew Ehret from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• The US-China Decoupling by Patrick Lawrence from Consortium News.

Unexpected surge in global methane levels

Click here to access article from Climate Nexus which "is a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors".  

I am not sure who the scientific organizations this article referred to, but some scientists clearly expected this surge because of increasing temperatures in the polar regions and the melting of the permafrost. I've posted at least six articles with scientific documentation that scientists, based on research, expected the increase in methane level in the past five years: 3-5°C temperature rise is now ‘locked-in’ for the Arctic, The climate emergency with Dahr Jamail, Arctic thaw imperils climate goals, Climate change in the Anthropocene: An unstoppable drive to Hothouse Earth?, Researchers Tally the Global Cost of Melting Permafrost, and Thawing Permafrost Will ‘Seep, Not Explode’ CO2.

Some scientists, particularly those who support the findings of biologist and generalist Guy McPherson, argue that it is already too late to avoid catastrophic climate destabilization: Support for action surges, majority say we face climate emergency, Hope is a Mistake and a Lie, David Suzuki & GM [Guy McPherson]- Abrupt Climate Change - Compassion in the Face of Death, No Surrender, and Two articles written by highly educated scholars illustrates the power of capitalist ideology.

Shielding the World From US Chaos Is No Easy Task

Click here to access article by Federico Pieraccini from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Since the Empire's failure to overturn the government of Syria and other evidence, there has been wide speculation that US weapons supplied in abundance by the US military industry has turned the Empire into a largely "paper tiger". Pieraccini evidently holds this view which is supported by considerable evidence. He writes:

Pentagon planners have no intention of revealing their military vulnerabilities in a war with Iran. The loss of US military prestige would also show to countries hitherto under Washington’s thumb that this dog has more bark than bite, making it all the more difficult for the US to browbeat countries with the threat of military force in the future.

What Trump seems to find difficult to understand is that his foreign policy is slowly eroding the superpower status of the US. The free pass Trump has given to the neocons and the pro-Israel and pro-Saudi lobbies have only served to bring the US the the brink of a new war with Venezuela, the DPRK, Iran or Syria. With Trump not really committed to any war himself, this will only lead to a humiliating backdown.

In spite of Trump's love affair with Israel and Saudi Arabia, I wonder if the Deep State, a virtual board of directors of the US capitalist circles and influentials in British and others in the ruling classes of the US/Anglo, Zionist Empire are aware of this theoretical reality and argument. Just wondering.

Fine dust and fossil capital in Korea

Click here to access article by John R. Eperjesi from Climate & Capitalism.

This professor living and working in Seoul, Republic of Korea (South Korea), has noticed rising levels of concern in South Korea as polluted air has been darkening skies over the country. He writes:

In Korea, China is often blamed for the pollution wreckage, a scapegoating one routinely hears from taxi drivers, random people on the subway, students, and even from some professors. The blaming of China has radiated throughout Korean society, amplified by opportunistic politicians and click-bait media headlines, resulting in a hysterical us vs. them opposition that views fine dust as an illegal immigrant, sneaking across borders and corrupting our clean air. This nationalist narrative has unleashed some disturbing online violence against China and Chinese people.

There is no doubt about the fact that a significant amount of air pollution originating in mainland China drifts across the Korean Peninsula. But here I want to offer an alternative ecocritical framework for thinking about the crisis of air pollution in South Korea in which fine dust is viewed as a product of fossil capital, defined by Andreas Malm as “an economy of self-sustaining growth predicated on growing consumption of fossil fuels, and therefore generating sustained growth in emissions of carbon dioxide.”[2]

The US is aware the confrontation with Iran is over a large geographical area: next rendezvous in less than 60 days

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

I missed the two significant points to this article when I hurriedly read it after returning from vacation: 1) the Zionist lobby will likely support Trump in the next election; and 2) the 60 day limit that Iran's government has decided to impose on a re-negotiation of the JCPOA agreement, which Trump unilaterally cancelled, before restarting it nuclear weapons development. Magnier interprets this as meaning that if Europe withdraws imports of fossil fuels from Iran that Iran will begin development of nuclear weapons. 

Addressing point number one, I think that many domestic political analysts think that Trump will be defeated in the 2020 presidential elections, but Magnier suggests that this is not so because of the influence that the powerful Zionist lobby has over US policies and because of Trump's full support of Israel interests. Point well taken.

Point number 2. I think that European countries decisions to not comply with US restrictions on importing energy from Iran could signal a major turning point in the dominance of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire instead of merely signaling a deadline for Iran's project for nuclear weapons development. I think that many of the capitalists in European countries are wavering in their allegiance to the belligerently aggressive policies of the Empire, and are more interested in their own economic well-being. These countries may be forced to pay higher prices for their energy if they comply with the US sanctions (being forced to pay higher prices to import US natural gas), and the economic benefits of joining China's Belt and Road Initiative are very inviting for European capitalists.

In This Blitzkrieg of Idiocy, Fascist Marches, Fake-news Coups, and What Looks Like a Race Toward Extinction – What is the Place of Literature?

Click here to access a speech given by Arundhati Roy posted in Scroll.in (India). (This is a transcript of her lecture at the PEN America Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture delivered by her on May 12 in New York City.)

I discovered this by reading a very abridged version on Wrong Kind of Green's website that narrowly excerpted her comments about the threatening climate destabilization. This post gives the full version of her talk which, I believe, portrays Indian politics as much the same as the Empire's politics, but with an Indian accent which gives us insights about what is going on in this second most populous country. In addition, I think there is much to be learned from her profound observations about reality as we head into the nightmare of climate destabilization and human extinction.

She also asks, and provides her answers to, the following question:

‘In this blitzkrieg of idiocy, fascist marches, fake-news coups, and what looks like a race toward extinction – what is the place of literature?’

Articles recommended for Saturday, May 25, 2019

• View the Frontline Documentary on Gaza That PBS Pulled by Alison Weir from The Unz Review. 

• Jade Helm and its Repercussions by Gordan Duff from New Eastern Outlook.

• Microsoft’s ElectionGuard a Trojan Horse for a Military-Industrial Takeover of US Elections by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News. (After our refusal to elect Hillary Clinton, our capitalist masters are now determined that their preferred official leader will be elected. Our "mistake" will never happen again.)

• The US Army Asked Twitter How Service Has Impacted People. The Answers Were Gut-Wrenching. by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

• Amazon helps US gov’t eliminate dissent from the Rick Sanchez show on RT.

• The Making of a “Rapist” by Pamela Anderson from The Indicter.

• “Truth ultimately is all we have:” Julian Assange appeals for public support by Oscar Grenfell from World Socialist Web Site.

Graeme MacQueen Reveals The Anthrax Deception

Click here to access the interview conducted by James Corbett with Graeme MaxQueen, author of The Anthrax Deception. 

I agree with Corbett that this is an important, well-written, and well-documented book, which I read, about the anthrax attacks of members of Congress immediately following 9/11. The reports we got in corporate media played up the hysteria and then at some point the FBI shut down their investigations, fantastic stories were contrived, and media coverage was quickly dropped. 

Let me be clear, because I've seen this manipulation of the American people since the assassinations of the Jack and Bobbie Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, the very aggressive attacks on the Black Panthers, the "War of Drugs", etc, etc., I knew that this was another false-flag event like 9/11 to stampede Congress into supporting very aggressive foreign policies. 

Our rich and powerful capitalist-fascist masters have succeeded time after time to fool the American people so that now they don't hesitate to spin fantastic tales through their media: "Russiagate", reports of chemical attacks that the Syrian government carried out on their own people, the Empire's efforts to create domestic and foreign "terrorist" attacks to create chaos and fear (the "strategy of tension") domestically, to create their own terrorist army called ISIS to destabilize the Syrian government, and to enhance support for very aggressive attacks on foreign nations starting with Iraq and Afghanistan. Briefly putting aside the outrageous crimes committed by a very well hidden Deep State of major capitalists, I am curious how long my fellow Americans will accept such outrageous operations and tales. 

Recommended articles for Friday, May 24, 2019

• The Belligerence of Empire by Kenn Orphan from his blog.

• The evidence we were never meant to see about the Douma ‘gas’ attack by Robert Fisk from the Independent (Britain).

• Syrian Gas Attack Was Staged Leaked Documents Reveal ( Live From State Theater Austin, Tex.) from The Jimmy Dore Show via YouTube.

• The western media is key to Syria deceptions by Jonathan Cook from BSNews.

• US-Backed Terrorists “Struggle” After Returning from Syria by Ulson Gunnar from New Eastern Outlook.

• Democracy vs. The Putin-Nazis by C.J. Hopkins from his website Consent Factory, Inc.

The London Climate Protests – Raising The Alarm [another reaction to this article]

Click here to access article by David Cromwell, editor of Media Lens, and from the latter's website (Britain). 

I posted this article a few days ago after arriving from a grueling road-journey to the West Coast to visit activists. I was hurriedly sifting through articles that seemed important to me, and offered no comment to this one other than describing its contents. This morning I have another reaction, particularly to one statement made by Cromwell which I quoted in my original post:

Even if corporate interests were crazed enough to think they could promote mass public dissent on this scale in the cause of profit, they would have no way of controlling the outcome.

I counter this argument with one I have advanced for years: that our ruling class of capitalists are indeed "crazed enough", and thus perfectly able to lead such movements so that they can control the outcome to insure that such movements don't interfere with their obsession with power and profits. They are insane. Period. And ordinary people are so disoriented by our capitalist master's control of all ideological and media institutions that they will be led like sheep into benign forms of protest. I don't know, but I think it is too late anyhow; yet, I intend to continue my lifelong fight against our "crazed" executioners to the last breath (def.).

The Climate Movement: What Next?

Click here to access article by Clive L. Spash from Wrong Kind of Green.

According to this article, economist Spash was asked to provide comment on the recent Great Transition (Tellus Institute) round-table discussion focused on the climate movement which began with an invited statement from Bill McKibben. Spash in his commentary writes:

The climate movement, like all environmental NGOs, has been subject to the influence of neoliberalism and corporate capture. Neo-liberals love to attack government while totally ignoring the corporate control of the economy. In the USA the extent of government capture is just ignored (from the President down and not just the most recent President either). There is a general failure to link the social and economic to the ecological. Political analysis is lacking, social theory is absent and there are a dearth of substantive ideas as to alternative economies from the existing paradigms of economic growth and price-making markets.

Hence the climate movement promotes price incentives (taxes, carbon trading), innovation and new technologies, commodification of Nature (ecosystems as goods and services, natural capital), offsetting losses of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions, and new quantitative measures of growth as progress.

It looks like the answer to the question posed in the headline is: faking progress by our capitalist masters.  

Manual for Survival. A Chernobyl Guide to the Future - book review

Click here to access the review by Elaine Graham-Leigh of Manual for Survival. A Chernobyl Guide to the Future authored by Kate Brown posted on Counterfire.

Because of the wide disparity in the reporting of deaths and health problems caused by the 1986 disaster to a nuclear plant in Chernobyl, a city located in Ukraine on the border with Belarus, and other accidents to nuclear facilities, the book's author examines the research done by these disparate sources. She finds considerable bias among official sources in numerous countries that is causing the under-reporting of health problems and fatalities due to the fundamental fact that the material necessary for nuclear weapons are produced in these plants, and other contaminating, largely economic factors. The reviewer, Graham-Leigh, writes:

Remarkably, although it has been more than thirty years since Chernobyl, the mainstream position is still that, aside from the 54 confirmed fatalities, ‘the final death toll will never be known’. We have apparently learnt so little from Chernobyl that scientists managing the aftermath of the Fukushima accident in 2011 were still saying that ‘they had no certain knowledge of the effects of low-dose exposures to radiation in human beings’, as if such a thing had never happened before. Kate Brown’s measured and well-informed study is an attempt to provide some of that missing certainty.

US is about to sanction the world if they don't stop purchasing Russian arms

Click here to access article by Andrew Korybko from InfoRos (Russia).

This American geopolitical analyst based in Moscow examines the latest economic warfare launched by the US administration to counter the influence of the Russians and Chinese who wish to break the dominance of power in the hands of ruling class capitalists and their US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. He focuses on the purchase of weapons in this geopolitical struggle.

... military relationships aren't the same as most trading ones where the customer simply purchases a product and that's usually the end of the exchange. Rather, they usually imply long-term partnerships where the seller agrees to maintain the military wares for an agreed-upon length of time and train the end user in how to properly operate them, which lays the basis for more comprehensive and strategic relations between the two parties as a result of these trustful ties.

There are also billions of dollars to be made these deals too, to say nothing of any others that result from this exercise of "military diplomacy". In addition, countries that have established these close "deep state" relations with Russia and China are generally more aligned with those two multipolar Great Powers and not as easily manipulated by the US, which is of course concerning from an American standpoint.

Democracy vs. the Putin-Nazis

Click here to access article by C.J. Hopkins from The Unz Review.

This excellent piece about reality deserves so much more of my attention, but I am short of time--I have other tasks to accomplish first. First, of all, this isn't the usual excellent piece of satire that he usually does. In this article he is very serious and insightful.

The post reminds me of a famous quote from Karl Rove who was so influential in the Bush, Jr. administration.

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Because our masters have so much power--they own everything--they can create self-serving "realities". When one reads in the newspapers, see on TV, read in books, hear on the radio from NPR the same "realities", they become reality that is accepted by the people. Our capitalist masters have always done this, but they are now doing it at much greater intensity simply because they own or control every significant media. And also, they have so frequently succeeded in imposing these "realities" on us that they have the confidence that we will believe the most ridiculous "realities".

The “Democracy versus The Putin-Nazis” narrative is our new “reality,” whether we like it or not. It does not matter one iota that there is zero evidence to support this narrative, other than the claims of intelligence agencies, politicians, the corporate media, and other servants of the ruling classes. The Russians are “attacking democracy” because the ruling classes tell us they are. “Fascism is on the march again” because the ruling classes say it is. Anyone who disagrees is a “Putin-sympathizer,” a “Putin-apologist,” or “linked to Russia,” or “favored by Russia,” or an “anti-Semite,” or a “fascist apologist.”

Question the official narrative about the Gratuitously Baby Gassing Monster of Syria and you’re an Assad apologist, a Russian bot network, or a plagiarizing Red-Brown infiltrator.

The London Climate Protests – Raising The Alarm

Click here to access article by editor David Cromwell from Media Lens (Britain). 

Cromwell offers some powerful insights about the mass concern over climate destabilization:

After thirty years of mortifying indifference and inaction, now is not the time to promote the belief that the crucial alarm that is at last being raised by Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion has been cynically 'manufactured'. It is our job to ring the alarm and ensure that something is done. But first we must ring the alarm!

Even if corporate interests were crazed enough to think they could promote mass public dissent on this scale in the cause of profit, they would have no way of controlling the outcome.

And later:

Herman and Chomsky's 'propaganda model' was not designed for this scenario. When individual corporate media editors, journalists, advertising and political executives realise that they and their families are genuinely facing death, it is not at all certain that they will continue to support the subordination of people and planet to profit to no purpose. At this point – the point where the mortally-threatened corporate lions lie down with the mortally-threatened activist lambs - the propaganda model may start to break down. Either way, it is our job to continue pressuring corporate media and, more importantly, replacing them with honest, non-corporate alternatives pushing for real change.

The protests must continue, must escalate, and governments must be made to adopt a kind of war-footing subordinating everything – especially profit – to the survival of our own and all other species.

Recommended articles for Wednesday, May 22, 2019 -- (frequent updates)

• The American Pathocracy by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog. (Updated at 9:30 AM, 9:40 AM, 9:45 AM, 10:40 AM, and 6:30 PM.)

• Israel’s Independence Day: Commemorating the dispossession of the natives and rise of the West’s outpost in the Middle East by Canadian Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left. 

Gowans provides us with an excerpt from his recently published book Israel, and teaches us some of the real history of Palestine after WWII. I highly recommend this book to reveal the efforts of the the Anglo-American capitalist ruling classes in collusion with Jewish nationalists to establish "Fort Israel", a European Jewish colony, to guard oil and gas resources in the Middle East for the benefit of newly emerging empire of Anglo-American capitalists against Arab nationalists who wanted such resources used for their benefit.

• The Missing Step by Craig Murray (Britain) from his blog. 

He reports on the legal and the not-so-legal maneuvers used by the Empire and omitted by corporate media, the propaganda organs of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, to capture Julian Assange. Assange functioned as a journalist who reported crimes committed by the Empire furnished him by whistleblowers and other sources. Such independent sources are dangerous to the ongoing operations of the Empire and its ruling capitalist classes to dominate the entire world.

• How to Find Broken Links Online by James Corbett from his blog The Corbett Report. (You might also do your own search on the subject.)

I have been increasingly frustrated by the no longer active links to important articles that I have used in the past to reveal supporting information to various arguments that I advanced. Corbett provides some very useful information on what to do if you encounter such links.

• Raising the Alarm – On the Capitalists Seeking to Profit from the Climate Crisis, a statement from the Wrong Kind of Green Collective posted on Wrong Kind of Green. (I advise people who are focused of the looming catastrophes of climate destabilization to follow this blog daily. They are revealing the real agendas that some prominent climate movements are serving--it's not the welfare of ordinary people.)

Over the past few weeks there has been much discussion among the online community concerning our six-act investigative series “The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg”. Some have continued to question the veracity of the information compiled by Wrong Kind of Green (WKOG).

Our series sought to illustrate how Thunberg’s image is being both propelled and exploited by various entities interested in promoting certain projects and ideas that will benefit their stock portfolios and bank accounts under the guise of “saving the planet”. 

• Vicious Cycle: The Pentagon Creates Tech Giants and Then Buys their Services by T.J. Coles from CounterPunch.

• What does “climate emergency” mean? Let’s define that OUTSIDE parliament by "GL" from People and Nature. (Britain)
  

Referring to the recent resolution passed by the British parliament declaring "a climate emergency", the author writes:

On one hand it’s a weapon in the hands of each and every campaign on climate change in the UK. It makes it all the more difficult for politicians and trade union leaders to defend their indefensible decisions to support fossil fuel companies and fossil-fuel-intensive infrastructure projects.

On the other, it’s a reflection of a huge political effort to co-opt, neutralise, patronise and smother the growing movement against politicians’ inaction on climate change. The cynicism and sophistication of these efforts should not be underestimated: they have been going on globally ever since the Rio agreement on climate change was adopted in 1991. And meanwhile, fossil fuel use has risen by about 60%.

We need to define, outside parliament, what this emergency means, and how it is going to be tackled.

• Iran: Preparing the ‘Battle Space’ by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• ‘Clash of civilizations’ or crisis of civilization? by Pepe Escobar from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. 

• Insidious Aggression: Sanctions as Covert Warfare by Tim Beal from CovertAction Magazine. 

• The Disinformationists by C.J. Hopkins, master satirist, from his blog Consent Factory, Inc. (Some entertainment to keep you laughing while in a despondent mood.)

I'm back, and posts selected by activists while on vacation -- updated

I arrived home yesterday from a long and exhausting drive from the West Coast of the USA to the Midwest where I now live. I enjoyed visits with some very astute activists who have followed my blog for a number of years.

I recommend the following articles (updated at 9:20 AM) that I missed while on vacation and which were forwarded to me by fellow activists who share serious concerns about the catastrophes that we are currently experiencing and lie ahead under this crisis-prone capitalist system. In the future I expect to be adding commentaries to the posts that I select and want to share with you.

• Newly Released FBI Docs Shed Light on Apparent Mossad Foreknowledge of 9/11 Attacks by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News.

• What is the Relationship Between Loneliness and Capitalism? by an anonymous writer for Dandelion Salad.  (This post included numerous important articles by other commentators related to the same subject.)

• The End of Supergiants: And What It Means by Dr. Louis Arnoux from Damn the Matrix.

• The Struggle Is the Meaning by Craig Murray from his blog (Britain).

Announcement: I will be going on a much needed vacation

Starting tomorrow the 9th of May,  I will be on vacation which will last approximately until the 20th of May. I'm not certain on what day I will be "back in the saddle" (def.) again. I might post something around the 16th when I will be visiting other activists near Astoria, Oregon.

Pamela Anderson and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief visit Julian Assange in prison

Click here to access article by Laura Tiernan from World Socialist Web Site. 

I urge everyone to send letters of support to Julian Assange as he languishes in a British maximum security cell. The instructions and address are at the end of this article.

Emerging from the maximum-security prison, visibly shocked and angered, Anderson and Hrafnsson addressed the media. Their statements were a searing indictment of state criminality and lawlessness on the part of the British and US governments.

Hrafnsson said, “It is for me, shocking to see my friend—an intellectual, a publisher, a journalist, a man that has transformed the world of journalism with his work—sitting in a high security prison, spending 23 hours a day in a cell, having half an hour outdoors if weather allows and half an hour to do everything else. This is not justice. This is an abomination.”

Articles recommended for Tuesday, May 7, 2019

• Overwhelming evidence shows global biodiversity in crisis from Climate & Capitalism.

• Climate-change induced “sinking” of Jakarta pushes government to relocate the capital by Sandipan Talukdar from Peoples Dispatch.

• What progressives don’t see by Eric Schechter from The Greanville Post.

• Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump by Larry C Johnson from Sic Semper Tyrannis.

• Denmark depriving Europe of right for gas on orders from Washington from United World International.

A World On Fire: Western Peoples’ Apathy Must End: A Cri de Coeur

Click here to access article by Vanessa Beeley from BSNews. (This was originally posted on Facebook, but I refuse to post articles from that website.)

Of course there are some beautiful souls in all these countries who have stood in solidarity with #Syria but there are also many who are still asleep, who don’t realise that these young men and women are dying for us, not only for Syria. What amazes me is the level of defensiveness in the comments – because this man, who has survived a number of attacks by the terrorists – has dared to openly criticise the people in the West for their passive collusion in the pain of his people. I take full responsibility for my government and their crimes – they would not exist without us and in my very humble opinion, we must start to take responsibility for what happens globally during our lifetime. WE are the change we are searching for, not our governments, not our President, not our pseudo-humanitarian NGOs, not the UN, not any institution that is automatically compromised by its sponsors and its establishment backers.

Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA

Click here to access article by Tom Secker and Matthew Alford from Insurge Intelligence.

The authors examined government documents which reveal another illustration of my long held argument that the capitalist ruling class controls every institution of our nation, the same way as the transnational capitalist class exercises major influence over every institution of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.

Tom Secker and Matthew Alford report on their astonishing findings from trawling through thousands of new US military and intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to manipulate scripts or even prevent films too critical of the Pentagon from being made — not to mention influencing some of the most popular film franchises in recent years.

This raises new questions not only about the way censorship works in the modern entertainment industry, but also about Hollywood’s little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus.

Hassan Nasrallah: Daesh is Still a US-Israeli Asset, Threatens Central Asia

Click here to access a speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah posted on Resistance New, Unfiltered. (Unless you know Arabic, go directly to the transcript below the video sections.)

If you don't believe this Arab leader who is vilified in corporate media, I have at least 25 other posts that support his argument that the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire and its satellite Saudi Arabia are responsible for the terrorist proxy armies that invaded Syria.

Where did they come from? Who brought them here? Who armed them? Who eased up things for them and gave them all the opportunities? Who gave them money? Who opened all the borders for them? Who covered them favorably in the media? All the Arab satellite channels constantly repeated (with praise) "the Islamic State"! Who (did all that)? We must never forget! Neither the Lebanese who have pushed back Daesh in the Jurd of Ersal and in the Bekaa have the right to forget, nor the Syrian people, nor the Iraqi people, nor all the peoples of the region must ever forget (all the atrocities) perpetrated by Daesh, (the Western and regional countries & media that supported them), and everything that Daesh will continue to do, as I'll mention later.

Extinction Rebellion Training, or How to Control Radical Resistance from the ‘Obstructive Left’

Click here to access article by Cory Morningstar from Wrong Kind of Green. 

Morningstar analyses and illustrates the capitalist origins of the UK's Extinction Rebellion movement that uses crowd and psychological techniques to take charge of the hunger-driven desire to do something about the coming environmental disasters. The author gives examples of this fake movement to illustrate the use of psychological and social techniques of the well-funded new movement to advance their messages.  These methods were honed to perfection by the subversive NGOs that promoted the color revolutions which occurred in many countries in the early decades of the 21st century. 

Our masters in the transnational capitalist ruling classes in charge of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire believe that it is better to lead the worldwide hunger to do something about the threat of environmental destabilization than allow grassroots people to create their own movements which might interfere with the Empire's obsessive quest for power and profits. 

This , in essence, forms the key strategy of Extinction Rebellion. To isolate radical voices and to dominate the narrative. While targeting the non-practical and pragmatic. A narrative and an orchestrated campaign that serves the ruling class. To give a faux sense of inclusion, while mocking those who have, first and foremost, an allegiance to the Earth. Framing those ["as political absolutists"] who recognize that the very capitalist system destroying all life on our finite planet, [a system which] will not and cannot be magically reformed to save us ....

Although Extinction Rebellion takes no position against capitalism, Hallam [one of the trainers] has no issue with taking a swipe at socialism.

Capitalism’s burning house: California wildfires put [capitalist] system on trial

Click here to access article by Nicholas Avedisian-Cohen from Liberation.

By July 2018, scientists were predicting an annual worsening of the wildfire situation due to global warming. Forestry experts and ecological engineers can diagnose the threat of wildfires with impressive precision and advocate for responsible individual practices, but an economy based entirely around manic pursuit of quick profits will continue to let fossil fuel industries and militarism run rampant, leading to devastating climatic shifts that make uncontrollable wildfire practically inevitable. California, despite its liberal self-branding as a “green” and “environmentally conscious” state, remains a hub for military contractors and the energy industry – the two biggest culprits in climate change. The state is simply reaping what it sows, when it comes to wildfires. [my emphasis]

This is the base reality.

Recommended articles for Monday, May 6, 2019

• A million species 'threatened with extinction' by Arthur Wyns from the Ecologist.

• US Troops In Syria For "Long Haul" Atop "A Lot Of Oil Resources": Pentagon Official by Tyler Durden from ZeroHedge.

• Failed Coup in Venezuela Intensifies Battle at Embassy from Black Alliance for Peace.

• The nationalist “socialism” of Bernie Sanders by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site.

• Gaza ceasefire holding following bloody weekend from Middle East Eye.

• The Palestinian Authority tax crisis is a no-win situation for Netanyahu by Jonathan Cook from The National.

• We’re all actors in the New Silk Road play by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times.

• The Yellow Vest Salpêtrière Hospital hoax: I reported live from there as it happened by Ramin Mazaheri from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

• In Upcoming Elections EU Parliament Faces Long List of Enemies by Attilio Moro from Consortium News. 

Is There a Path Out of Ratcheting Mid-East and Geo-Strategic Tensions?

Click here to access article by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Because the author was a former MI-6 employee, he has obviously written this for other political analysts who follow events closely in the Middle East. That means he frequently uses abbreviations that may make reading difficult for you. "MBZ", "MBS", "GNA", and "AKP".)

... circles close to Erdogan see the noose tightening around Turkey’s neck, and view this Kurdish ‘project’ as ‘a platform’ from which to penetrate and weaken Turkey itself. For the leadership, this amounts to a conspiracy, standing in open view, to undermine Turkey.

This piece of political analysis illustrates the real dangers of hyper-aggressive negotiating strategy that Trump clearly uses. But do his key players in his administration take them seriously? This question is not only relevant in connection with the Deep State's strategies against Turkey, but on all other foreign policy matters.

... those who see the bellicose language uttered from Bolton and Pompeo as simply a negotiating strategy are perfectly free to continue in that opinion, but others may view it as the piece-by-piece construction of a narrowing tunnel that ends with only one exit: forever escalation against ‘malignity’.

The real issue is, does Trump see and understand this? Or has he convinced himself that the Administration’s wider bluster is actually winning: Making America Great Again? On this question, hangs our joint futures.

Venezuela: Establishment Talking Points Translation Key

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

Things keep heating up in Venezuela, with possible “military options” now being seriously discussed at the Pentagon. And of course you know what that means! That’s right, it means we can expect to see even more lies and manipulations from the political/media class as the narrative managers try to get their rapey little fingers into our minds to manufacture support for unconscionable acts.

This can create a very confusing environment for everyone, where up means down and black means white and “humanitarian intervention” means “murdering thousands and thousands of innocent human beings”. With that in mind, here’s a handy translation key to help you understand what the establishment mouthpieces are really saying:

George Orwell would love her translations.

Recommended articles for Sunday, May 5, 2019

• Wake Up, Capitalists! If the Oceans Die, so Does Your Global Economic Project by Robert Bridge from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Politicians celebrate “World Press Freedom Day” as Julian Assange languishes in prison by David Walsh from World Socialist Web Site.

• Russian Nukes And Cuban Intelligence Threaten Venezuelan Democracy [fake news] from South Front.

• On Venezuela, Tucker Airs Anti-Trump Ideas While Maddow Wants John Bolton To Be More Hawkish by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

On Contact - The deep rot of American journalism w/Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi and Chris Hedges, having both worked for media corporations, offer valuable inside information regarding the work of journalists within media corporations. Thus, many true journalists leave these organizations to work for peanuts (def.) at alternative media or RT, a Russian sponsored website. Those who remain are forced to become "presstitutes" (def.).

Occupy the NYTimes

Click here to access article by Josh Mitteldorf originally from OpEdNews but due to their objection to my ad blocker, I must post the article from The Greanville Post. 

Mitteldorf is another follower of corporate media who has had his mind completely boggled by their fake news.  He writes:

There is indeed a crisis, but not as it has been characterized. The crisis is not that we have alternative accounts of reality, but rather that some of these contain truths that our mainstream “free press” has kept hidden from us. The crisis is that the version of the world that the mainstream media presents to us no longer passes the smell test. The lies have gotten ever bigger, the topics swept under the carpet have created a bulge we cannot ignore, and meanwhile the Internet has provided compelling alternative narratives for anyone who cares to look. The NYTimes version of some key events has diverged so far from the truth that no one with an independent mind can fail to notice.

He wants activists to organize a takeover of the New York Times, but I'm think that it will take much more: a social-economic revolution to cure our ills.