The lobby firm that works both sides of the room

Click here to access article from Corporate Europe Observatory.

The article uncovers the deep infiltration of major biotech industries that produce glyphosate  into scientific efforts to research the effects of glyphosate. This article focuses on the role of lobby organizations that work both sides, but it also contains links to other articles showing that many people involved in science research projects investigating the effects of glyphosate are being funded by the biotech industry. For example, one spokesperson, Christoph Then, from a science agency, Testbiotech, has charged the biotech industry with gross interference in their research and that of others.  

Testbiotech analysis shows the biotech industry has seriously impacted the results of the research project. As a Testbiotech report published today also shows, the biotech industry has not only systematically influenced the GRACE research project, but four other similar EU research projects. All of the coordinators of these projects are part of a close network of institutions that are funded by industry.

Even specialised consultancy groups such as PERSEUS and GENIUS which have biotech industries as their clients, are directly involved in the GRACE research project. For example, the Belgian company PERSEUS that just recently approached the German government on behalf of a US biotech company about allowing the cultivation of oilseed rape derived from new methods of genetic engineering, is organising communication services for GRACE.

“The documented networks existing between EU research projects and industry cannot simply be regarded as coincidental. Just a handful of experts all organised in the same networks are dominating publicly funded risk research on genetically engineered plants”, Christoph Then concludes for Testbiotech. 

Already happens: Capitalism destroys human labor force and goes to the next phase

Click here to access article by "system failure" from the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens.

Because the English is a bit awkward, the anonymous author is likely writing this as a second language. Still the subject of increasing automation that the writer addresses is a very important issue that points to major convulsions in the future. 

Connecting the dots one can discover the most nightmarish scenarios. Destructive capitalism's next phase is the total substitution of the human labor force with robotic machines, or in other words, the hyper-automatization. There is a process taking place right now, and no one (or nearly no one) knows what would happen after its completion. 

What could be a blessing for humans is a nightmare under capitalism.

In case that these armies of interconnected machine slaves belonged to everyone, thus if everyone had the right to benefit from the goods that they produce, then no problem. What should be done, however, in case that these machine slaves, the capital of future, belong (like the most of today's capital) to the very few, while at the same time most of the people do not have access in the goods they produce and an opportunity to work for a (human) wage?” 

Our Childhood Poverty Is a Global Embarrassment

Click here to access article by Josh Hoxie from US News & World Report.

The data provided by a UNICEF study indicates that the US should be even more embarrassed.

If a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members, the United States just received an incredibly unflattering judgment.

A new study published by the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund, or UNICEF, ranked the wealthiest countries of the world by the well-being of their most disadvantaged children. Out of 41 countries, the U.S. ranked No. 18 overall.

For context, the U.S. ranks No. 1 in total wealth.

The lawless state of Israel

Click here to access article by Asa Winstanley from Middle East Monitor.

For the Palestinians, Israel is a democracy for its Jewish citizens alone. For its Palestinian citizens (some 20 per cent) it is an ethnocracy. Israel is defined in law and in practice not as a state of all its citizens (as other modern industrialised nations are – at least formally) but as a state of all the Jews of the world.

This means that Jews from London, New York or Yemen with no family ties or history in the land, still have more rights to the land of Palestine that the native inhabitants of that land – the Palestinian people. This is the reality of Zionism. 

China Plans to become GMO Giant

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

At the very highest levels it is now clear that the Chinese regime of President Xi Jinping and his Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, who is also head of the State Council, have decided to make China a world leader in the highly controversial field of Genetically Manipulated Organisms or GMO and the related highly toxic (to humans) pesticides and herbicides. This was made clear in November when the Chinese state ChemChina announced it was seeking to buy the Anglo-Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Syngenta of Basel. This is for me a personal disappointment and for the world, a major blow.

Hot March breaks temperature records

Click here to access article by Jackson Stiles from The New Daily (Australia). 

Earth’s hot streak has continued for a record 11 months – sparking fears of global catastrophe.

And read what some top climate change scientists are saying about this streak--if you have a strong stomach.

Hey, Bernie, Leave Them Kids Alone

Click here to access article by Paul Street from CounterPunch. 

Street analyses the results of the latest quadrennial election ritual where the Democratic party apparatchiks provide a "progressive" candidate to act as a sheepdog tho lure real progressives back into to party to support the real candidate backed by Empire interests. In doing so he provides his views on the various actors in this spectacle: young naive progressives, older progressives, and the Democratic party's fake progressive apparatchiks. But in the end, what is really needed is the construction of a genuine grassroots movement dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism and its rich supporters who are driving us off the cliffs of never-ending wars and climate destabilization.

The people’s and workers’ struggle needs a more serious and radical starting lineup and game plan. The 2015-16 squad went about as far as people can go playing by the reigning major league and party system rules. It was fairly impressive. They took some good swings up at the plate. But, well, guess what? It wasn’t even in the revolutionary ballpark. The ruling class sent them back to the bench with their bat in their hands, as usual.

When Liberals Run Out of Patience: the Impolite Exile of Seymour Hersh

Click here to access article by Dave Wagner from CounterPunch. 

Wagner tells us how Seymour Hersh, the great investigative reporter who is best known for his exposé of the My Lai massacre and other reports that told the true story of events that our media directors didn't want covered, put together the real story of the execution of Bin Laden and his subsequent banishment from American corporate media. I guess it is one thing to uncover the hidden dirty secrets of the Empire and allow them to be published by one or two media companies, but it is not permitted to expose the lies of Empire propagandists.

Seymour Hersh’s The Killing of Osama bin Laden a pocket-size collection of stories written for the London Review and printed during the second Obama administration arrives at an awkward moment for the expatriate journalist who not so long ago was esteemed as the finest investigative reporter in the United States. Hersh now publishes abroad because his talent, though undiminished, no longer fits into the publication plans of the nation’s newspaper and magazine publishers. He has, it appears, failed to adapt to the times. His revelations about deceit and brute force in the conduct of foreign affairs that delighted his editors when he raised a torch over Dick Cheney lost its shine when he reported on President’s Obama’s not-so-different Cold War liberalism.

The moment of Hersh’s fall from grace can be pinpointed to a meeting in the office of New Yorker editor David Remnick in 2011.

I had a good laugh at the sentence "Hersh now publishes abroad because his talent, though undiminished, no longer fits into the publication plans of the nation’s newspaper and magazine publishers." Maybe Wagner wrote this with a deliberate comic or satirical effect, but this way of describing what happened is an extremely obscure way of hiding the truth which is in direct contradiction to what Hersh's investigative work as been about. 

One Way The White House Manipulates

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

Bernhard finds out from a major ruling capitalist class propagandist, Ben Rhodes, how they work their magic to gain the public's acquiescence and support for their policies.

You can replace the "Iran deal" with "regime-change in Syria", "Russia's aggression" or some big trade deal the White Hosue wants to push through. It works the same way with every issue. Some experts in some (well paid) thinktanks get fed some juicy bits, they go out to cheerlead clueless reporters who then write whatever validates the various White House claims.

It is all test driven and works. Unless of course people have time and energy to inform themselves through other than the usual sources. Only few are able to do so.

War Against the People

Click here to access a review by Kit Klarenberg of a book by the above title authored by Jeff Halper, and posted on CounterPunch.

Halper explains how Israel has become a laboratory used to research and develop weapons to control and suppress populations, and is marketing their products to oppressive governments all over the world.

As a starting point, Halper notes that Israel currently maintains diplomatic relationships with 157 countries. In every instance, those relationships contain military and security treaties and agreements, which serve to spread Israeli killing apparatuses, surveillance ‘solutions’ and battle tactics worldwide. This accounts for why the tiny country is now a seemingly permanent fixture in lists of the world’s top arms exporters, and the most militarised state in the world.

Evidently, Israel’s oppressive methods have stopped being bad for business. In fact, they’ve mutated into a unique selling point, and have bought much criticism-stifling goodwill from Israel’s customers in the process. Why?

Halper attributes this phenomenon to a global move towards weaponised neoliberalism the world over post-9/11, as governments scramble to suppress internal dissent that their iniquitous economic and military policies create.

Future Options: From Militarism And Monsanto To Gandhi And Bhaskar Save

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

Because this Britisher lived a number of years in India, he knows a lot about the disastrous effects that industrialized agricultural corporations have had on that country. To counter these disastrous effects on the minds of citizens, he writes how corporations manage the growing opposition to their destructive but very profitable practices.

...to ensure it remains ‘business as usual’, part of the message is that there is no alternative to the chemical-intensive, GMO model of farming. ...the companies they head or their associates have done everything possible (including bribery and fakery) to ensure their model dominates by smearing certain scientists, capturing trade bodies and negotiations, incorporating themselves within government policy and regulatory agencies, using the concept of ‘commercial confidentiality’ to justify a lack of transparency and by funding universities, media outlets and research with the ultimate aim of privileging their model of agriculture ahead of others, which they or their supporters seek to attack, discredit and marginalise.

The industry and its supporters attempt to wrap themselves in ‘free market’ ideology, while failing to acknowledge that any concept of ‘freedom’ that they attempt to associate with ‘the market’ has long been discredited.

The Fort McMurray Disaster: Getting Beyond “Is It Climate Change?”

Click here to access article by Bob Henson and Jeff Masters from Weather Underground.

 

...even the most elaborate, carefully conducted attribution studies (research designed to show how and when climate change has made a particular event more likely) may not always give the conclusive results people crave when it comes to specific fires and floods--although such work can say quite a bit about long-term trends.

Pentagon working on plan to convert the Islamic State caliphate into a US-backed Syrian rebel redoubt

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

I regard Stephen Gowans as a top tier political analyst, and I regard this piece as an illustration of his excellent skills at parsing what the deception-infused US policy really is in Syria and nearby areas. It attempts, and I believe succeeds, to clear up the many mysteries and strange reports regarding our actions in Syria and adjacent areas.

Because Syria has tried to pursue policies that are independent of the Empire's interests, they have become a target for destabilization and regime change much like Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine. Now it appears that Venezuela has been re-added to the Empire's list.

The motto of the governing Ba’ath Party [the ruling party in the Syrian government], unity (of the Arab nation), liberty (from foreign domination), and socialism, is light years from the motto Washington would prefer states emblazon on their banners. We embrace atomism, welcome foreign investment, apotheosize capitalism, and are open to US military bases on our territory, is more along the lines of a motto a good member of the “international community” is expected to adopt. You need know little more than the foregoing to understand why Washington insists that Assad and his fellow Ba’athists step down.

He goes on to delineate the Empire's strategy and objectives for Syria:

The Wall Street Journal sketched out how the United States will carry on its war against the Syrian state. Reading between the lines, the war will be pursued under the guise of eliminating ISIS, and while this will be the immediate outcome of the war if the campaign is successful, the ultimate objective will be the conquest of Syrian territory held by the caliphate. The war will be pursued on the ground by Sunni Arab fighters trained and equipped by the special operations forces of the United States and its allies. US proxies on the ground—the Sunni Arab fighters recruited and equipped by the Pentagon—will capture territory currently held by ISIS, backed by US air strikes. Once captured, the territory will remain in the hands of the US surrogates.

Mighty Monsanto: Veteran cartoonist fired for pro-farmer, anti-Big Ag piece

Click here to access article from RT.

This type of incident happens everyday in capitalist countries even though most people insist that they have a right of free speech, etc, guaranteed by their constitutions. If you examine many constitutions of various capitalist countries you will find many such freedoms listed, but these constitutions are only a part of the ideological structure which promises freedoms but deny them in practice. 

This subterfuge is simply due to the fact that enormous wealth and control over jobs give capitalists overwhelming power. Thus, whenever the exercise of these "freedoms" become in conflict with the interests of powerful capitalists, the freedoms give way. Most people know this and modify their behavior to suit powerful capitalist interests, but this cartoonist thought he had a constitutional right to create this cartoon and others for a local newspaper. Thus his job, or his means of living, was taken away from him. The moral of this story is that you have lots of theoretical freedoms under capitalism, but you must be willing to starve to death to exercise them.

Here’s the Climate Context For the Fort McMurray Wildfire

Click here to access article by Brian Kahn from Climate Central. 

I looked long and hard for any commentaries about the relationship between the fire conflagration in Fort McMurray and global warming. This is one of the few. Most other corporate media are feasting on the sensational aspects of this event, some try to figure out the causes but have a very limited perspective by focusing on the immediate causes, some attribute the increasing fires to a "new normal" climate, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau criticized people who made a  connection with global warming. I've noticed that local TV meteorologists in the Seattle area, if they make a connection at all to the record breaking temperatures we've been experiencing, correctly deny that any single event can be traced to global warming; but yet they refuse to look at patterns over time.

This article provides the best analysis of the relationship, but it only makes some brief references.

The wildfire is the latest in a lengthening lineage of early wildfires in the northern reaches of the globe that are indicative of a changing climate. As the planet continues to warm, these types of fires will likely only become more common and intense as spring snowpack disappears and temperatures warm.

“This (fire) is consistent with what we expect from human-caused climate change affecting our fire regime,” Mike Flannigan, a wildfire researcher at the University of Alberta, said.

I think that the fire conflagration at Fort McMurray is giving us a look into our future. Unfortunately, most people, especially our ruling capitalist class, refuse to acknowledge this simply because capitalism and a planet that can support human life are completely incompatible. Capitalist indoctrinated people frequently can imagine the end of humans before they can imagine the end of capitalism.

As Climate Disruption Advances, UN Warns: "The Future Is Happening Now"

Click here to access article by Dahr Jamail from TruthOut.

Each month as I write these dispatches, I shake my head in disbelief at the rapidity at which anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) is occurring. It's as though each month I think, "It can't possibly keep happening at this incredible pace."

But it does.

The Voting Delusion

Click here to access article by Dmitry Orlov from Club Orlov.

Orlov lists many of the barriers preventing ordinary people (non-capitalists) from participating in elections, but he misses the 800 pound gorilla that guarantees that nobody interferes with the capitalist agenda to gain more wealth and power. 

The gorilla is capitalism, a system that a tiny group of people imposed through violence on the vast majority of humans over the past several centuries. Their system enshrines the right to take possession under rules of "ownership" of all the products and services created by working people. The capitalist ruling class have sought to legitimatize their dominance of society mainly by establishing the so-called "rule of law", and of course these rules, which they made, were designed to serve and protect their system of ownership. And they have many other means that they use to promote the legitimacy of their rule: their domination over every institution of society which they use to indoctrinate people in pro-capitalist values, especially the fake mythology of democracy and their sponsorship of elections. The capitalist class monopoly on the means of indoctrination has been so successful that many critics like Orlov completely miss this 800 pound gorilla.

Capitalism is a system born in the belly of feudalism. Feudalism was based on territory captured through the use of violence imposed on people who lived in those territories. Theirs was a system controlled by these victorious families who laid claim to everything that existed in the territory under their control: the food and crafts produced by working people and on the people themselves. This form of family domination was passed down through patrilineal and primogeniture rules which established the permanent power hierarchy known as monarchs and aristocracy. This ruling class reinforced the legitimacy of their rule by promulgating myths about the "divine right" of monarchs, and religion in general had a very important role in buttressing the rule of feudal authorities.

Feudalism was born in the belly of the rule by military chieftains who imposed violence on others to obtain war booty, slaves, etc. Such is the history of humans, about 2% of human history called "civilization", after the days when primitive communism existed for 98% of our history, but then ceased to exist after military chieftains imposed their violence on humans.

No doubt you have detected a pattern: the history of ruling classes are all ultimately based on violence or the threat of violence imposed by a tiny minority on the vast majority of humans. All else is subterfuge. And this includes elections.

Extinction, “De-Extinction,” and Capitalism

Click here to access a 52 minute interview with Ashley Dawson, author of a new book entitled Extinction: A Radical History. The interview begins after a news summary at approximately 6:30m. The broadcast is from the studios of KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, California.

What should we do in the face of the ongoing extinction crisis? What is rewilding, and how does it work? Is de-extinction, which involves the resurrection of extinct species, advisable? Ashley Dawson puts mass extinction and the various efforts to address it in a broader political-economic context.

Dawson targets capitalism as the culprit behind the mass extinction of life forms that is increasing at a rapid rate in spite of various attempts by advocates of  "green capitalism" to preserve species. A very thought provoking interview throughout, but he specifically draws our attention to the destructive role of capitalism starting at 36:25m.

Another goodbye to democracy if Transatlantic Partnership is passed

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

I presume he means the anemic version of "democracy" that our masters permit us to exercise--like having to choose between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Corporate control on both sides of the Atlantic will be solidified should the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership be passed. Any doubt about that was removed when Greenpeace Netherlands released 13 chapters of the TTIP text, although the secrecy of the text and that only corporate representatives have regular access to negotiators had already made intentions clear.

 Health, safety, environmental and food laws will all be at risk....

A 9/11 "Dog That Didn't Bark"

Click here/ to access article by John Spritzler from New Democracy World.

In this brief article Spritzler focuses our attention on only one among many doubtful aspects of the whole 9/11 tragedy that suggests a conspiracy was involved to commit one of the grossest crimes against humanity in the nefarious history of false-flag operations.