Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, June 8, 2020

• Capitalism Always Produces Racism by Sam Miller from Left Voice.

• FBI launches open attack on ‘foreign’ alternative media outlets challenging US foreign policy by Gareth Porter from The Grayzone.

• Investors Were Being Blocked from Fund Withdrawals Months Before the Pandemic by Pam and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• They Don’t Care About The Data, And They Never Have by Allan Stevo from LewRockwell.

• This Has Been the First Global Infodemic of the Information Age — But Are We Now Immune? By Marko Marjanović from Anti-Empire.

• The Establishment Only Dislikes Trump Because He Puts an Ugly Face by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. My reaction: Also because he doesn't follow orders from the Deep State--he's a "loose cannon" within the rightwing.

• Despite pandemic, CO2 hits new record from Climate & Capitalism.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, June 7, 2020

• Anti-Communism is a Fundamentalist Religion, Now Followed by Billions by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook. (Note: I must thank an activist, Caren, for alerting me to this post.) My commentary follows:

Not only anti-Communism is a religion, but capitalism is as well. Unlike Vltchek, I was thoroughly indoctrinated in capitalism having been born and raised in the USA. But I was exposed to other versions of political reality in my young adult years. So I gradually became immune to the incessant propaganda that I was subject to the rest of my life. Because I had doubts in 1959 and subsequent years about what I was told to believe about Cuba and its revolution, and I sought out obscure periodicals in the library at a university that I was attending. These provided a very different version of political reality regarding their revolution. Since then, I uncovered one lie after another while being subject to an incessant, 24/7 propaganda barrage disparaging communism (a Marxist variant on the theme of socialism) and celebrating the fake version of "democracy" which I soon discovered as the bourgeous or capitalist version of democracy. I became convinced that capitalism was the root cause of so many social problems.

However Vltchek never directly answered the question posed early in his article in a quote apparently by his friend Aleksandr Buzgalin: “How is it possible that a system so logical, progressive, and so superior to what is, up till now, governing the world, failed to permanently overthrow the nihilism and brutality of capitalism, imperialism and neo-colonialism?” Obviously he lays the blame on capitalist propaganda. But, what would you expect other than their use of propaganda together with all other weapons at their disposal in order to destroy a system that was a major threat to capitalist rule?

I have since studied this question and have concluded that the Soviet Union was so damaged after their revolution in 1917 due to foreign invasions and trade boycotts by capitalist countries that they soon succumbed to a self-serving bureaucracy led by Joseph Stalin, and from which they never recovered. In effect, a bureaucratic ruling class was established. In addition, Lenin and his Bolsheviks knew that in order to succeed, other revolutions needed to occur in advanced capitalist countries which did not happen because they were crushed by the capitalist ruling classes.

Now I would answer this question by stating that "a system so logical, progressive, and so superior" to capitalism is no guarantee that it will survive and thrive. Even if the USSR had anything like a real communism, history has offered proof of this. I think that a communist system might still succeed if humans had a future beyond a century with the (doubtful) assumption that humans could avert a catastrophic nuclear war. But they do not. Because capitalist activities have so polluted our skies, oceans, and trees with greenhouse gases, the human species has insured its own extinction within a few decades. 

Karl Marx got one thing wrong--the inevitability of communism for the salvation of humans. Why should humans unlike all other species have this quality of endurance?

• The Most Revealing Footage On Police Brutality Is These Cops Applauding Its Perpetrators by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Homicidal Cops Caught On Police Radio by Jimmy Dore (of The Jimmy Dore Show via YouTube). 

• Is the Coronavirus Scare a Psychological Operation? by Kevin Ryan from Off-Guardian.

• The Shallow Deep-State Goes Deeper as It Moves Toward Martial Law by Edward Curtin from his weblog Behind the Curtain.

• BlackRock Authored the Bailout Plan Before There Was a Crisis – Now It’s Been Hired by three Central Banks to Implement the Plan by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

• CNBC Makes Up V-Shaped Charts To Support False Claims Of Economic Recovery by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, June 4, 2020

• Pro-BLM Demonstrations Sweep Across Europe by Guillaume Durocher from The Unz Review.

• Don’t Fall for the Myth of the “Outside Agitator” in Racial Justice Protests by Glenn Houlihan from Jacobin.

• The “Corona Hoax”, The Proliferation of Racial Riots. Towards a Military Lockdown? by Peter Koenig from Global Research.

• Enough with the Consensus Already! by Thierry Meyssan (French) from his weblog VoltaireNet.

• COVID-19: ‘The Facts Changed – But Government Lockdown Policy Didn’t’ from 21st Century Wire. 

• Biosecurity and Politics by Giorgio Agamben from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• The pandemic and George Floyd: A biopolitical trap of poverty and racism by Sam Hamad from TRT World. 

• Propaganda and Engineering Consent for Empire with Mark Crispin Miller. Abby Martin interviews Professor Mark Crispin Miller, professor of Media Studies at New York University from Telesur (via YouTube). (This qualifies for the "best posts" category.)

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, June 3, 2020

• The Capitalists of the 21st Century by Norbert Häring (Germany) from his weblog Money and more. (Note: I've assigned this as a "best posts" category.) My commentary follows:

I notice this morning that there is a slew (def. #3) of posts alleging that the protest movement is being manipulated (see this, this, and this--btw, I've since removed The Duran from my recommended list of websites.) There is certainly manipulation going, but what type, to what extent, and who benefits is too soon to tell.) What is certain is that the Empire's transnational capitalist ruling class does not want a "crisis to go to waste". It's immediately apparent that the Deep State wants to get rid of Trump, but what else, to my mind, is yet to be determined. It's clear to me that police forces all across American represent the mailed fist of fascist capitalism, and as such they won't disappear or become transformed into protecting the people as their official mission. So, it appears to me that the protest movement is moving toward a clash with the ruling class.

Häring has read a book by this title (The Capitalists of the 21st Century by Werner Rügemer) which apparently the article is a summary of the book according to Häring. This article contains a considerable amount to learn about the latest phase of capitalism. For example from the following section:

This, our capitalism – or death for all

The wealth of the BlackRock milieu is increasing, but the national economies and the infrastructure important for the majority of the population – schools, apartments, hospitals, water pipes, sewage treatment plants – are decaying or being privatized and made more expensive by the capital organizers. Climate warming is being accelerated. Armament profits boom with the invention of new enemies. While the new capital masters have created diverse collective forms for themselves, they are destroying the remnants of previous collective forms of dependent employees and maneuvering them into professionally staged, ultimately joyless, sick loneliness.

With the inward war of the new, even more US-led capitalists against democracy, against the rule of law and the welfare state, they also became more outwardly aggressive. They wage declared and undeclared wars through their governments and military and intelligence services, expand their global military presence, secretly and openly arm their representatives. Even nuclear war on European soil becomes a calculated, incalculable possibility. Motto: This, our capitalism or death for all.

I think this is an important article and book that activists can learn much from. It looks to me like the current protest movement, if it is to evolve into something more that that, is confronting a powerful force. And I think that the above motto means that the ruling capitalist class are like an alcoholic, in the final stage of addiction, who will risk everything--even death--to obtain their drugs of domination, control, and wealth that the capitalist system provides them with in such abundance. (Btw, the nerve center and the real capital of this highly invisable capitalist ruling class appears to be East Wenatchee, Washington and behind the Sabey Data Center (also see this.) This way they can take advantage of taxpayer-funded cheap energy to power their data centers. The hydroelectric power plants, built by workers in the Great Depression of the 1930s, on the Columbia River produce the cheapest electricity in the USA. It is also the home of the soccer-field-sized data centers run by Yahoo, Microsoft and Dell. Do you think 21st century capitalists are dumb? I admit that they may be, but they have all the money to hire people with brains to run their data centers, the government, and everything else.

But, I fear that today's youth are ill-equipped by so many years of indoctrination, propaganda, and entertaining distractions that they are hardly a match for such a goliath of a capitalist ruling class.

• Why America’s revolution won’t be televised by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times.

• If you can't beat'em ... by cartoonist Terry Everton from Dissident Voice. 

• Rebellion and Repression: Capitalism’s Long Hot Summer Begins by Ben Becker from Internationalist 360°.

• It’s a Class War Now Too by Joshua Frank from Defend Democracy Press.

• Are we about to see a Colour Revolution in the United States? by Kit Knightly from Off-Guardian. 

• VIDEO – Here are the Horrifying things I learned at a Contact Tracing Class from FRN (based in Serbia). 

• Facts Vs. Fake by Peter Koenig from Dissident Voice.

THIS IS ALL I HAVE TIME AND ENERGY FOR.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, June 2, 2020

• The Police Are Not What You Think featuring Lee Camp (of Redacted Tonight) from RT (via YouTube). (My reaction: Maybe in communities that are heavily African-Americans and other colored minorities, these communities should start their own enforcement services to intervene in disputes among their populations.)

• How did the protest end up here? | Crowd chants ‘eat the rich’ at BLM rally in Beverly Hills from RT (via YouTube). (My reaction: This is evidence that some white Americans and others are starting to realize that class warfare is occurring in the USA.)

• Their Violence and Ours by Nathaniel Flakin from Left Voice.

• Agent Provocateurs: Police at Protests All Over the Country Caught Destroying Property by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News (based in Minneapolis).

• The Focus on Looting Shows How Our Systems of Power Value Capital Over Human Lives by Eli Day from In These Times. 

• Top Ten Signs We’re Living in a Police State by Ryan Cristián from The Last American Vagabond.

• “We Are Trying to Build Humanity”—Vijay Prashad on Chinese Socialism & Internationalism Today from the Qiao Collective.

• How America’s largest corporations loot black communities by C.J. Werleman from TRT World (Turkey).

• Americans Should Definitely Be the Cops of the World by Marko Marjanović from Anti-Empire. (My reaction: This satirical article suggests that people all over the world are recognizing the defects of American police forces. However, are the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire not already trying to police the world?)

• Doctors Against Borders (Lockdowns) by Ron Clutz from his weblog Science Matters.

• Commentary: It's high time Fauci and the rest of the 'experts' were made to answer some questions from The Blaze.

• German Official Leaks Report Denouncing Corona as ‘A Global False Alarm’ by Daniele Pozzati from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• Why they hate Sweden by Fraser Myers from Spiked.

• Anti-Abortion Forces Would Impose Slavery-like Controls on Black Women’s Bodies by Margaret Kimberley, with occasional remarks by Glen Ford, from Black Agenda Report.

• China’s poverty-annihilation miracle by Adnan Afirat from United World (Turkey).

• An Arrested Middle East – The ‘New Strategy for Securing the Realm’ Dissipates by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, June 1, 2020

• The George Floyd Killing in Minneapolis Exposes the Failures of Police Reform by Alice Speri, Alleen Brown, and Mara Hvistendahl from The Intercept.

• From Soft to Hard Fascism: “Get In Your House Right Now!” by Kurt Nimmo from his weblog Another Day in the Empire.

• Many US Journalists Arrested After New York Times Falsely Claims That Doesn’t Happen In America by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Undercover cops or protesters picking out bad seeds? from RT (via YouTube). 

• We Are All Jakarta by David Swanson from his weblog Let's Try Democracy.

• The Propaganda Multiplier from Swiss Policy Research. (Note: This post might provide you with all you need to know about fundamental media corporations.)

• Unsanitized: BlackRock Is Buyer and Seller by David Dayen from The American Prospect.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, May 31, 2020

• Young White Men Abuse George Floyd Protests For Violence And Looting by Bernhard (Germany) from his weblog Moon of Alabama. 

• US has deadliest police culture in modern world - George Floyd family co-counsel from RT (via YouTube). (Note: Police Unions are very strong with the sole exception to other labor unions in the USA. Could it be that they are protecting the ruling capitalist class?)

• Police Deny Any Connection to Mysterious Minneapolis “Umbrella Man” Saboteur by Raul Diego from Mint Press News (based in Minneapolis). (Note: This is the latest example regarding police infiltration of protests in order to discredit the latter.)

• Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, And Police Infiltration Of US Protests by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 

• As Chief Prosecutor, Klobuchar Declined to Bring Charges Against Cop that Killed George Floyd by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News.

• LAPD’s Hollywood Office: How The Department Shaped ABC’s ‘The Rookie’ from Shadowproof. (Note: This shows how the ruling class shapes views about fascist cop-killers in the USA.)

• U.S. Lectures World on Human Rights as Cops Kill Blacks With Impunity by  Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• “Germ-Ridden Masses” – How America’s Wealthy Elite Describe the Rest of Us by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News.

• In the West: Propaganda, Hysteria and Truly Foul Breath! by Andre Vltchek from Dissident Voice.

• Nobel prize-winning scientist: the Covid-19 epidemic was never exponential by Freddie Sayers from Unherd. (Note: The scientist uses Hubei province, and the capital of this province is Wuhan.)

• “It’s all Bullsh*t” – 3 Leaks that Sink the Covid Narrative by Kit Knightly from Off-Guardian.

• Sunrise Movement Being Co-Opted By Biden Task Force by Jimmy Dore of The Jimmy Dore Show (via YouTube). My reaction: Even liberal Jimmy Dore sees through the attempt to co-opt the Sunrise Movement.) 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, May 29, 2020 (part 2 of 2)

•  Fabricated Shocks and Open Windows by Mark Taliano from Global Research.

• A Rendezvous with Destiny? by Nomi Prins from TomDispatch.

My commentary: This is an excellent illustration of a social democratic take on the latest capitalist crisis. Prins harkens, along with Engelhardt, us back to the Great Depression which they see as similar to the current crisis. Unfortunately for capitalism-loving social democrats, this time is different. I see the current crisis as brought about by the predictable reckless behavior of a ruling class that aspired to do too much: build a dominant capitalist empire while pursuing the accumulation and consolidation of all the wealth on the planet. 

I believe, even without further evidence, that this capitalist class engineered the current pandemic primarily as cover for bailing out their banks while providing a number of other benefiits such as increasing fuel for their piromaniacal attacks on China and to rid themselves of "useless eaters" of elderly retired folks and surplus workers. I believe this because I have witnessed their astonishing criminal record of the assassination of the Kennedys, the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and domestic others as well as all the foreign adventures to subvert or attack others who stood in their way of building a capitalist world empire. I believe that these criminals have been responsible for many false-flag attacks both domestic and foreign with 9/11 being their most brilliant achievement.

But this time it is different. This pandemic is a desperate gamble for them to hold onto power, and to me the outcomes look to be very different than the Great Depression. You see, I was born in the middle of the Great Depression, and I know first-hand what it was like for my parents.

Biowarfare has been seen as an unpredictable weapon, and for this reason it has been banned by most capitalist ruling classes. But to our ambitious masters who, like good fascists, saw that with sufficient research and development they could engineer it as a controlled type of weapon that could be useful in particular circumstances. The current situation with defeats abroad and economic crises domestically, in desperation, they gamblled that this was such a situation. The results are yet to be determined.

• U.S. Debt Crisis Comes into View as Fed’s Balance Sheet Explodes Past $7 Trillion by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• How Patriarchy and Capitalism Combine to Aggravate the Oppression of Women by Denise Comanne from CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt).

(Note: I've run out of time and energy for today.) 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, May 29, 2020 (part 1 of 2)

• BREAKING: FULL TEXT – TRUMP PLACES YOUTUBE TWITTER FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM – UNDER PUBLIC CONTROL: Trump Decrees that these are part of the 'Public Square' from FRN (based in Serbia). 

My reaction: Great! But why not media corporations and their fake news and manipulation of the minds of the public? "Who'd a thought" (def.) that a Republican administration would do this? This shows that sometimes we, the people, can benefit from the internecine battles of the capitalist ruling class. (updated commentary at 10:16 AM CT.)

• The Stupid Insanity of Biological-Warfare R&D by Eric Zuesse from The Duran. 

My commentary: I love it when Zuesse uses his academic training as an historian to dig up evidence form obscure sources that serves to validate my thesis that US right-wing capitalists had already decided to build an empire at the conclusion of WWII. But my thesis was that they had decided before that, yes, before the war--read the  evidence in my commentary here. 

Furthermore, he goes on to argue with evidence that imperialist USA never stopped developing biological weapons after the war in order to suppress any nation that impeded their progress to establish an capitalist American Empire in order to destroy the Bolshevik threat and rule the world much like the Nazis attempted to do. Evidence was also comprehensively furnished by Dave Chaddock, in his book This Must Be the Place, that the US used bio-weapons in the Korean War.

I am confident that in the future there will be evidence that will slowly leak out which will serve to prove that the US was responsible for this latest pandemic. Zuesse apparently thinks so too. But, of course, our masters will try and largely succeed to suppress this evidence from the American people.

• Anarchy in the USSA by Steve Brown from The Duran. 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, May 28, 2020 -- one is a "best posts"

• Position paper from Medical Professionals and Scientists for Health, Freedom and Democracy (their new website). 

• Canadian Cities Hit by Pandemic Lockdown. Vulnerable to BlackRock’s Privatization Agenda by Joyce Nelson from Global Research (based in Canada). 

• German Medical Doctor Katrin Korb - Speech via YouTube.

• CrossTalk Bullhorns, Quarantine Edition: No strategy from the Cross Talk Show on RT. (Note: The host discusses the topic "strategy" with guests Dmitry Babich and Alexander Mercouris.)

• Lock Step: How the Rockefeller Foundation wants to implement its autocratic pandemic scenario by Norbert Häring from his weblog Money and More.

• US Declares Vaccine War on the World by Prabir Purkayastha from Internationalist 360°. (Note: You will need to know about TRIPS Agreement and patent pools.)

• The Injection Fraud – It’s Not a Vaccine by Catherine Fitts from her weblog Soleri Report. 

• Facts Vs. Fake. A Worldwide Lockdown of Everything by Peter Koenig from Global Research. 

• Left Gatekeepers Through the New Left: Monitored Rebellion Part II by Bruce Lerro from Planning Beyond Capitalism. (Note: I encourage you to read Part I of his series. This clearly is in a "best posts" category.)

• Collaborators and Resisters by Bill Willers from Dissident Voice.

• How Patriarchy and Capitalism Combine to Aggravate the Oppression of Women by Denise Comanne from CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt).

• Michael Jordan’s “Last Dance:” A Celebration of the American Nightmare by Danny Haiphong from Black Agenda Report.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, May 24, 2020

• Facts about Covid-19 from Swiss Policy Research.

• US Billionaires’ Net Worth up $434 Billion Since Shutdown Start. We're all in this together! from Anti-Empire.

• Bill Gates’ Web of Dark Money and Influence – Part 1: Philanthropic Narrative Shaping posted by Derrick Broze from The Last American Vagabond. 

• Calm Down We're Only Doing Fascism Until There Is a Vaccine. By Marko Marjanović from Anti-Empire.

• Coronavirus Pt3 – Testing: What are we doing? What does it mean? by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny from Vaxxter.

• You Don’t Need Invasive Tech for Successful Contact Tracing. Here’s How It Works. By Caroline Chen from ProPublica. 

My commentary: "The Key to Successful Contact Tracing? Trust." Chen has gotten onto something. Although citizens in China and South Korea trusted their governments, can we trust ours? If you think so, I have a couple of fine bridges to sell you.

• Coronavirus and the Constitution: Entering the Not-So-Brave New World by Prof. Lynn Wolfe from Global Research.

• Millions forced to choose between hunger or Covid-19 from Grain.

• The ‘Battle’ Against COVID-19 in a Fragmented World, Has Ruined Billions of Lives by Andre Vltchek from 21st Century Wire.

• Big Brother meets COVID-19 by Susan Rosenthal from her weblog. (Thanks go to an activist for alerting me to this article.)

• Why We Stay Asleep When Covid-19 Is Trying to Wake Us Up by Kelly Brogan, MD, Ali Zeck, and Sayer Ji from Brogan's weblog.

• Workers Fight for Their Lives by Michelle Chen from In These Times.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, May 22, 2020 (part 2 of 2 parts)

(Note: I have posted today's articles in two parts because I was worried about YouTube censors taking down an article in part one before you could view the video contained in this article.)

• COVID-19 Has Replaced Osama bin Laden as the Fall Guy for Lost Liberties by Robert Bridge from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• COVID-19: What Does Being Positive Really Mean? What Are We Really Detecting? by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny from Vaxxter.

• Washington’s New Anti-China Strategy by Thierry Meyssan from his weblog VoltaireNet (France). 

• Podcast: Aaron Mate Debunks RussiaGate and Discusses How Liberals Came to Love Bush-Era Neocons, an interview conducted by Mnar Muhawesh, founder of Mint Press News.

•  A Doctor a Day Letter - Signed uploaded from Scribd by Fox News.

More than 600 doctors signed a letter urging President Trump to end the nationwide coronavirus shutdowns and referred to orders issued by states that keep businesses closed as a “mass casualty incident” with devastating consequences. (From Washington Examiner)

• Fever: class struggle under pandemic from Fever: Class struggle under pandemic. (This article, written by the founders, introduces a new website.)

• Covid-19 Profiteers Are Making a Killing by Amber Colón Núñez from In These Times.

• Fed Chair Powell Promises “Transparency,” then Draws the Dark Curtain Tighter by Pam and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• The Progressive International: The Center Left Attempts to Rescue Capitalism by Facundo Aguirre from Left Voice. (Note: This is about social-democrats trying to rescue capitalism.) 

• The Corona pandemic and the Struggle for our Peoples’ Resources and Food Sovereignty by Omar Aziki from TNI. 

• Potentially Fatal Combinations of Humidity and Heat Are Emerging Across the Globe by Kevin Krajick from State of the Planet. 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, May 22, 2020 (part 1 of 2 parts)

• 10C Above Baseline by Robert Hunziker from CounterPunch.

“Business as usual” has not slowed down one iota in 62 years ever since Mauna Loa Observatory started collecting CO2 data in 1958. Noticeably, it has already accelerated+60% this century.

"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." And the TeeVee got humans so frightened and  worried about a little pandemic!

• New Evidence Suggests the United States Government may have Engineered Covid-19 by Malcolm Harris from The Duran. Be sure to watch the YouTube video at the end of the article before the censors take it down.

The narrator in this video clip failed to mention that the USA used a biological weapon during the Korean War. Although she cites many disconcerting documented facts, her inferences about China and WHO are not supported. Maybe she wanted to get past the censors.

• The Giant Virus in the Room: Corporate Vaccine Makers Need More Pandemics, to Grow by Dy Chery from News Junkie Post. 

• EXPOSED: Bill Gates Funding Partnerships and Moderna – America’s Tangled Vaccine Web from FRN (based in Serbia). 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, May 21, 2020

• How the United States Government Failed to Prepare for the Global Pandemic by Vijay Prashad from CounterPunch. (Note: You must be aware of the difference between SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.)

• Brave New Normal (Part 2) by C.J. Hopkins from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc. (Note: Part 1 is here.)

• Pandemic 2020: From Statistical Fraud to Controlled Society by Vincent Mathieu from Global Research. (Note: I think "DSP" must be explained here.)

• Vaccine Wars in the USA by Russell Bentley from FRN (based in Serbia).

• Capitalism vs. science: The lessons of the 36-hour Moderna vaccine frenzy by Benjamin Mateus from World Socialist Web Site. 

• Food shortage prompts clashes between hungry protesters & police | COVID-19 lockdown from RT (via YouTube).

• 1) The Journey of the Jobless by Kalena Thomhave , and 2) Everybody Hates the SBA by Alexander Sammon both from The American Prospect.  (Note: I've included two articles explaining how many Americans are suffering from job losses.)

• Some Truths about Falsehoods by Fernando Buen Abad from Resumen. (Note: I thank Caren, an activist, for alerting me to this article.)

• Life as Commons by Stavros Stavrides from Undisciplined Environments. 

• How To Understand All This China Stuff by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, May 20, 2020

• The Journey of the Jobless by Kalena Thomhave from The American Prospect.

• The US is Dramatically Overcounting Coronavirus Deaths by John R. Lott, Jr. from Townhall.

• The Global COVID Lockdown Is Pushing the Third World to the Brink by Daniel Ben-Ami from Anti-Empire. 

• VIDEO: Lukashenko Publicly Calls Out Putin for Blundering With Lockdown — Putin’s Reaction Says It All by Marko Marjanović from Anti-Empire.

• Sweden has pioneered an alternative to lockdown – and it works by Fredrik Erixon from The Spectator (Britain). 

• The Fable of the Chinese Whistleblower by Stephen S. Roach and Weijian Shan from Project Syndicate.

• How Bill Gates Controls Global Messaging and Censorship by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. from Children's Health Defense. 

• As Moderna’s Covid-19 Vaccine Takes The Lead, Its Chief Medical Officer’s Recent Promotion of “Gene-Editing Vaccines” Comes to Light by Whitney Webb from The Last American Vagabond.

• Which Side of the “Vaccine Information War” Are You On? posted by Derrick Broze from The Last American Vagabond. 

• Lord Sumption on the UK Lockdown BBC News downloaded to YouTube by Masood Saeed.

• China updates its ‘Art of (Hybrid) War’ by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times. 

• Global Capitalism, “World Government” and the Corona Crisis by Prof Michel Chossudovsky from his website Global Research (Canada).

• On the Need for Balance In All Things by Palestinian-Canadian Ghada Chehade from her weblog Ghada's Soapbox.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, May 19, 2020

• Bill Gates and the Population Control Grid by James Corbett from his weblog.

The question that Corbett poses in his final comment is not "who is Bill Gates?". Gates is simply taking advantage of the advances of technology, which is inevitable, as is his unconscious assumption that capitalism is an uncontravertible fact of reality. He has been immersed with this idea all of his life while living in the center of the capitalist empire and benefiting from the system with enormous profits and power. Gates is not an evil ogre who wants to intentionally enslave mankind. He is merely a brainwashed human wanting to logically take advantage of technology for the benefit of capitalists, like himself. Hence, the real question is: is the existence of capitalism necessary? and the answer is: in the time remaining for the human species is the necessity of comprehensive socialism: a rule by and for the people. Advanced technology should benefit all the people, and not a tiny transnational class of capitalists. 

But the latter class is so addicted to power and profits that it will take a monumental effort, in the time remaining, to overthrow their system and replace it with socialism.

• Security State Using Coronavirus To Implement Orwellian Nightmare from The Jimmy Dore Show (via YouTube) featuring Dore interviewing Whitney Webb who reads from a secret report that was released under the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act).

• INTERVIEW: Can Dr. Judy Mikovits be Trusted? The Truth about her Arrest from FRN (based in Serbia) which features journalist Ben Swann interviewing Dr. Judy Mikovits about "the truth behind the arrest of Dr. Judy Mikovits" and related subjects. (Note: You may also be interested in my re-post regarding Mikovits on May 14.)

• Profiting from Coronavirus by Craig Murray (Scotland) from his weblog. 

• Our Civilisational Quagmire – Looking Truth in the Eye by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Taxpayers Are on the Hook for 98 Percent of the Fed’s $6.98 Trillion Balance Sheet by Pam and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

(Note: This is all I have time for.)

Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, May 16, 2020

• In defence of conspiracy theories (and why the term is a misnomer) by David Coady from The Conversation.

• No Lockdowns: The Terrifying Polio Pandemic of 1949-52 by Jeffrey A. Tucker from American Institute for Economic Research. (Note: I remember well the history of the polio epidemic which is reported accurately in this article.)

• The “TRACE” Act—Is This the World We Want? by Mary Holland from Children's Health Defense.

• MAJOR: 27 Million MORE Americans Now Without Health Insurance Due to Lock-down Job loss by Drago Bosnic from FRN (Fort Russ News which is based in Serbia).

• An economic tsunami could soon thrust half a billion people into extreme poverty by Kate Linthicum, Nabih Bulos, and Ana Ionova from Defend Democracy Press.

• Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic, America’s Billionaires Thrive and Prosper by Lawrence Wittner from Dissident Voice.

Financially, they are doing remarkably well.  According to the Institute for Policy Studies, between March 18 and April 28, as nearly 30 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits, the wealth of America’s 630 billionaires grew by nearly 14 percent.  During April 2020 alone, their wealth increased by over $406 billion, bringing it to $3.4 trillion.  According to estimates by Forbes, the 400 richest Americans now possess as much wealth as held by nearly two-thirds of American households combined.

• China’s International Solidarity Aid to the World During the Corona Pandemic by
  Stansfield Smith from Dissident Voice.

• Truth in America R.I.P. by Paul Craig Roberts from his weblog.

• Why Capitalism Can’t Cure Global Pandemics by Prabir Purkayastha from Citizen Truth.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, May 14, 2020

• Professor Dolores Cahill Debunking the Corona Narrative from the channel Computing Forever (on YouTube) and posted on Gumshoe News that is based in Australia. (Note: More and more medical doctors and scientists are coming forward to challenge the pervasive fear campaign on major media. We have heard from the Bakersfield, California doctors here (which was censored on YouTube) and here, the Dr. Ioannidis of Stanford University here, and others; but now we hear from the highly qualified Prof. Cahill who thoroughly debunks the fear campaign. If you wish to skip the introduction and Cahill's opening remarks about more details regarding her qualifications, you may want to start listening at 9:08m.)

• COVID CHAOS: A Closer Look At Coronavirus Testing from 21st Century Wire.

• UKC News: COVID Lockdown ‘Stop Light’ System, Evidence of Gov’t Using MSM for PsyOps from 21st Century Wire. 

• Video: Dr. Judy Mikovits Exposes Dr. Fauci Contradicting Statements On Hydroxychloroquine posted by Joaquin Flores from FRN (Fort Russ News).

• Cuomo: Slashing and Privatizing Education is “The New Normal” by Francesca Gomes from Left Voice.

• Wall Street Will Likely Be the Only Winners in the Pandemic Housing Crisis by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News. 

• And They're Gone! The Obscenity of Dr. Fauci's Jobs-Mageddon by David Stockman posted on LewRockwell. (Note: I've published from this site because Stockman's website is behind a paywall. "Mageddon" as defined by Wikipedia.)

• How The Trump Administration Inserts 'Blame China' Propaganda Into Main Stream Media by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama.

• Psychological warfare misses its mark: China is winning the Covid-19 media war by Orçun Göktürk from United World (based in Turkey).  

• American Weapons Manufacturers Are Thriving Even as the US Economy Suffers by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, May 13, 2020

• Who’s in a Catch-22? by Joseph Natoli from CounterPunch. (Note: He uses "pace" in this sentence, "The escape valve from this cynical scenario is broadcasting our national self-proclaimed humanitarian priorities, pace Wall Street." to mean "with due reference to", a preposition.)

• CDC Fudging Numbers to Create Medical Tyranny & Hysteria – Coronavirus and Dodgy Death Numbers by F. William Engdahl from FRN (Fort Russ News).

• Holding Healthcare Hostage: The Making of a Ventilator Crisis by Tony Cartalucci from his weblog Land Destroyer Report.

• Lock Step – The eerily prescient pandemic scenario of the Rockefeller Foundation by Norbert Häring from his weblog Money and More.

• The U.S. Response to Covid-19 Has Lavished Wealth on the Rich by Miles Kampf-Lassin from In These Times.

• The Fed Hasn’t Spent a Dime Yet for Main Street Versus $735 Billion for Wall Street by Pam and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• YouTube CEO Admits Users Don’t Like Boosting of “Authoritative” Mainstream Channels, But They Do it Anyway by Paul Joseph Watson from Summit News. 

• The mind-blowing history at Fort Detrick by Ceng Jing from CGTN (China).

• How Big Wireless Lobbied Governments to Build 5G For Citizen Data Collection and Surveillance by Derrick Broze from Mint Press News.

• REVEALED: How a British-backed media operation tried to turn Alawites against Assad by Ian Cobain, Harun al-Aswad, and Mustafa Abu Sneineh from Middle East Eye. 

• State Control is not Socialism from Libcom. (My reaction: This is a question of which class controls the state.)

• ‘We are the vaccine against unilateralism’: Non-Aligned Movement gathers in Venezuela to resist dictatorship of dollar by Anya Parampil from The Grayzone.

Fake leaders and ineffective movements (final edited version)

Edited for clarity at 8:17 AM, 6 PM, & 7:28 PM (all CT) 5/13/2020, and 2:37 PM 5/15/2020.  While I may continue to do some minor editing to correct errors of spelling, etc., this is a final version.

Note: My analysis will focus on Americans because I have an intimate knowledge of them having grown up in the USA, reading widely from original sources, and having studied American society in sociology classes.

By Ron Horn 

Since WWII the US capitalist ruling class began the construction of an empire under the control of transnational capitalists from what was left of the British Empire, European countries, and later they added Israel which was founded by right-wing European Zionists. Much of Latin America has always been dominated by the USA. In the process of building this empire, the new empire-builders of the ruling class, by using manipulative methods to shape public opinion, had deleterious effects on nearly everyone in the USA. They accomplished this by the ongoing application of comprehensive propaganda and proliferation of ideology that appealed to the capitalists' instincts of consumption and acquisitiveness. The new leaders of the ruling class corrupted both the consciousness of ordinary workers as well as educated people who were recruited to manage public opinion. The conditions of the post-war period in which the USA had the only industrialized economy that was still intact, enabled the ruling class used this dominance, to spread the themes of material and other capitalist values throughout all institutions--education, media, entertainment, etc., not only throughout the US society, but throughout most of the Empire they were constructing. This false consciousness, in turn, left workers without a real political consciousness that was necessary to confront and fight against the ruling class's exploitation. But the new fascist ruling class didn't stop there.

They initially purged Hollywood and educational institutions of people who had any socialist/communist ideas, and went on to develop very sophisticated methods to promote false movements and fake leaders that led nowhere by co-opting these leaders and movements to serve their fundamental interests of profit and power. Recent such examples we find in the Green Movement and individuals like Sen. Bernie Sanders. I'm going to argue in this paper that liberals like Michael Moore have also contributed to this effort. I want to warn the few genuine activists that in spite of their anti-capitalist rhetoric, these activists are fake, the movements which they lead, or contribute to, are ineffective, and why. 

The current US ruling class is worried about their recently suffered defeats in the Middle East, threats by the spectacular rise of the Chinese economy, and is presently tormented by the recognition of diminishing growth on a finite planet. Although they have not given up their quest to rule the world, the ruling class is currently in a dangerous defensive mode. Standing in their way are primarily China, Russia, Iran, and other nations that aspire to a multilateral world. The current US/British/Zionist Empire will continue their traditional offensive operations against these enemies, and create new methods in a desperate attempt to maintain their domination of the world as well as solving the new dilemma of continuing their capitalist operations on a finite planet. 

First, it is necessary to review a little history in order to understand the present problems confronting American society and its ruling class. The US ruling class of major capitalists was surprised by their success in rallying the American public behind the war effort in WWI by the use of propaganda. They subsequently saw that propaganda techniques were a vital component to shape public opinion to support the construction of an empire. Thus, after that horrific war the ruling class supported the efforts of propaganda experts like Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann went on to develop advanced techniques of propaganda. They promoted the study of what they called "public relations" which is the capitalist euphemism for propaganda.

Communist ideology was quite popular in Europe after WWII, but it posed a major threat to the new empire builders. The US ruling class used a combination of violence (see this and this) and propaganda to put down this threat. During this period within the USA, the capitalist ruling class launched an anti-communist crusade initially using the rabid anti-communist and pro-capitalist Winston Churchill who had an extensive history of fighting the Soviet Union after its socialist revolution in 1917. The Soviet Union represented a major threat as a successful alternative to the advanced capitalist nations of the world. (That said, I don't want to argue that the Soviet Union represented some kind of enlightened socialism because they were corrupted by a Stalinist-inspired bureaucracy that had long taken control of their nation.) The capitalist ruling class has since WWII concentrated on establishing a highly skilled and indoctrinated upper-middle-class (and throughout the the nations that they controlled) not only to advance their imperial agenda but to recruit people of this class as their ideological warriors to manage their ideological institutions against ordinary workers.

Initially, the new empire-builders used the existing loyal members in Congress against militant labor unions. They passed the Taft-Hartley Act which prevented unions from collaborating in a general strike that was so effective for workers during the 1930s. Then they cleansed the upper-middle class of all dissidents left-over from the Great Depression. To do this they first attacked Hollywood which was soon followed by the educational institution and government during the period known as McCarthyism. Finally, when the alcoholic and unstable Sen. McCarthy got around to attacking the army, the ruling class and President Eisenhower put a stop to it.

(During this period Koreans were trying to set up an independent state free of their old colonial oppressors from Japan. But the US didn't like what the Koreans were trying to do which they saw as too much inspired by communist/socialist ideas. The US used the weak United Nations as cover to intervene using primarily US forces to crush the communist tainted forces during the Korean War. Fortunately, China came to the rescue.)

For many decades the new ruling class continued to play on the threat of communism to the "American way of life" which was mostly defined by endless consumption and by vague notions of "freedom". The USA has been at war formally and informally ever since WWII to put down nations that were seen to establish socialism and those which would not serve US capitalist interests. They used anti-communist propaganda against their own people to engage in one war after another. But, after the Vietnam War the ruling class has used other types of threat-propaganda.

The anti-communist threat, which has never ceased, was followed by the War on Drugs (1971) to oppress largely African-Americans and poor Americans while the CIA, of the empire builders, profited from the drug trade. Then the first shock to the American psyche was carried out in 2001 with the false-flag operation of 9/11, shortly thereafter that the War on Terror was launched to further threaten Americans in order to mobilize them to support the ruling class project to invade one nation after another in the Middle East. And now we have the Coronavirus pandemic and the strategy of laying off all but essential workers, the ruling classes are destroying the lives of many workers--it is too soon to tell how many. Could this be another shock administered to American society and the world? Most detective investigations begin by asking the question: who benefits?  

Since WWII it is clear that propaganda has been used by empire-builders of the capitalist class to re-engineer all institutions--films, education, media, employment, etc. to serve capitalist interests, and education was one of their primary targets. Textbooks have been re-written and teachers, professors, and educational administrators have been carefully assigned to schools based on pro-capitalist ideological qualifications. Also, added to this was an infiltration of all media corporations initially by the CIA, and later by people who were thoroughly indoctrination in capitalist values and perspectives.

While the ruling capitalist class has its own well-hidden agenda to preserve their system, they will try to deceive and distract citizens using a whole range of psychological methods: media propaganda and management of news, re-writing the history of the USA and the world, and using false flag ops like 9/11 to shock the consciousness of their working classes. Vijay Prashad explains this process well in his analysis of hybrid wars and US imperialism. Using propaganda and indoctrination the ruling capitalist classes of this Empire, particularly of the USA, has now been rewarded with fabulous wealth and power never seen before in recorded history. To carry out this agenda they have used well-remunerated, highly trained and indoctrinated upper-middle-class workers.

Currently, most Americans are thoroughly brainwashed by these agents who have served the ruling class for many decades since WWII. This highly skilled upper-middle-class class has been tasked to supervise all institutions of our society. Many of them have "alternative" weblogs or write for anti-Empire weblogs, but they do not know the real history of capitalist oppression of workers before the 1930s and the administration of FDR (historian Eric Zuesse comes to mind). These liberals serve the ruling class at election time by dangling various reforms such as universal health care that appeal to the masses, too many of whom are grossly overweight, sickly, and otherwise unfit because they have been conditioned to a consumptive American lifestyle.

Regarding the recent film Planet of the Humans, I agree with John Steppling when he writes "The film ... becomes tantamount to a marketing campaign for depopulation ...". The capitalist class long ago knew about capitalism's imperative of growth in a finite planet. They explicitly wrote this in 1972 when they published the controversial booklet entitled "The Limits to Growth". They soon saw a backlash from numerous activist organizations with the charge that they were advocating depopulation, advocating the depopulation of useless (to them) all those people that didn't contribute to the profit and power that their beloved system supplied to them with such abundance. This film offers the same implied theme--depopulation. The ruling class, of course, don't want to explicitly say it, but they want a depopulation to be driven into our consciousness as a "force of nature", pandemics, etc. The ruling class really wants to rid the Earth of burdensome "useless eaters", introduce comprehensive surveillance a la Bill Gates and digital money in order to track people and other control benefits. A primary benefit of the current pandemic (to the ruling class) was to provide cover for the huge bailouts given to banks and heavily indebted corporations. Could the coronavirus, as a pure coincidence, serve all of these objectives and many secondary benefits?

Please don't misunderstand me by concluding that one of the problems isn't over-population. It is a fact that humans are adversely impacting the environment because there are too many of us. (This fact is in addition to capitalists producing too many unnecessary products by using fossil fuels in their obsessive search for profits.) But capitalists have allied themselves with organized religions for a number of reasons, and important reasons were, and are, to discourage or prohibit women from having abortions and using contraceptives. Thus, capitalist ruling classes always supported various Christian religious denominations that served these purposes (in addition to others). Capitalists saw an increasing population as a benefit to provide more consumers to provide more opportunities for profit. By capitalist ruling classes keeping much of the world in poverty, the only way poor people can survive into old age is to have many children which insured some of the latter would survive and take care of them into old age. This practice is a kind of social security for poor people.
 
Steppling, in his review of the film Planet of the Humans, is absolutely "spot-on" when he writes "... the essential and overriding two problems with this film can be generalized as an absence of class analysis, and an absent analysis of western Imperialism." In their film Moore and Gibbs, who because of the brainwashing that they have suffered growing up in America, "pulled the punches" of class analysis.

However Steppling fails to develop this criticism; instead, he succumbs to what is currently fashionable criticism by smearing Moore and Gibbs with racism--he often refers to the latter as "white guys". Racism has been practiced for centuries by the capitalist ruling class. We still see the harmful psychological effects today among many people: white people as well as people of color. Racism has been historically useful as an integral part of capitalism by separating workers into mutually antagonistic camps and justifying the wholesale slaughter of uncivilized "savages". But racism is the least of the sins committed in the film by Moore and Gibbs. The lack of class analysis is paramount. 

This taboo against class analysis has affected many American intellectuals. They may at most use words that suggest anti-capitalism, but their actions always stay safely within the capitalist framework so as not to annoy their keepers. Most have been so brainwashed by the many decades of propaganda and indoctrination that they think capitalism is like the sun--a fixed entity and an incontrovertible fact of nature.

More recently ruling class propagandists have used the divide and conquer strategy by promoting themes that promote conflicts between men and women and gay people and straight people. They have largely unsuccessful getting us to hate Russia with "Russiagate" propaganda; but because of the Coronavirus pandemic, they may be more successful in getting the American population to hate China.

The fundamental reason why US activists and revolutionary movements have not been effective, nor in the future will they be, is that they have been subject to a long and comprehensive process of capitalist propaganda and indoctrination. As a result, working people along with fake leaders are ignorant of American history and of the heinous effects of US actions on the rest of the world. They have been divided into mutually distrustful and hostile camps, brainwashed, obedient, distracted by vacuous entertainment, and unhealthy due to capitalist propaganda that would only allow them to be mere spectators in sports, and from a poor diet of cheap "fast foods" prepared for them by giant corporations. There is no reason to expect such people to lead or form an effective revolutionary movement. What we will see at most are pseudo movements and fake leaders who promise solutions to our many problems. We will probably need to look beyond the people of the US/British/Zionist Empire to see genuine leaders and revolutionary movements.