Bulletin N° 823
The 2005 film made by members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain who invite us to take a fresh look at the world we live in
and to question some of the most basic assumptions about life in capitalism :
"Capitalism and other kids stuff"
(Original Version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEQk4VvVUGw
Subject
:
For Hope, Analysis, and Action
16 November 2018
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The
looming twin disasters of Global Warming and Thermo Nuclear War bring with them
murder, torture, famine, mass migration, genocide, fear, bigotry, storms, flood and
fire. We are living in a man-made hell of almost biblical proportions. Looked
at scientifically, we are facing what appears to be the end of our species, or
at least the end of organized life on earth as we have known it. From the
beginning of civilization, some 5000 years ago, the historic quantitative progression of labor
exploitation and hyper-exploitation started with chattel slavery, and developed
into serfdom, and later into wage slavery. These sources of private wealth produced
inequalities that in turn produced qualitative
leaps from the political economies of absolute monarchies, to those of empires,
to dictatorships, and to limited democracies with cultural accoutrements
growing like excrescences from every political body. The current attempt to
abort democracy, now overseen by an obscure hermit kingdom and an archaic
religious sect in the employment of an empire, is an anomaly that might
disorient anyone untutored in history. It represents a shattering of rational
thought and political tradition, and it constitutes a real threat to humanity. The
driving force, of course, is the quest for private profits which is premised on
the violence (and the threat of violence) of labor exploitation and class war. Like the slaves of
old, our only reward is the grave. We exist to make the “owners” of capital
richer!
But,
some see this dark cloud has a silver lining. Behind this grim reality
is evidence of a stubborn contradiction which raises the question: Who has the
legitimate right to control the surplus value that our economy generates, the
so-called “owners” or the producers of this wealth? Upon what logic is this
right founded, and what are the necessary conditions to maintain this control?
A
great deal of disinformation has been generated, and illusions created, to hide
the production process from general scrutiny, but in fact necessary goods and
services continue to be produced by human labor, even if labor-management and consumer-management has
taken on a robotic countenance today to obstruct any inconvenient ideological
formations. At the core of human society remains man-and-women-kind, despite
the numerous technologies that mediate between labor activity and the actual
production of commodities, and despite the various techniques available to control and
even eliminate workers in large numbers.
Our
struggle remains the same as the one that has been faced by dominated classes for
millennia: How to take control of surplus value away from the “owners” and
place it under the control of democratic decision-making, for the well-being of all
society. Tactics and strategies of this kind must be placed on the agenda, as
the morally bankrupt ruling classes careen toward a concrete wall of their own
making. . . . This is not our chosen destination!
The
20 + items below discuss the consequences and the causes of political
alliances that are creating great harm to mankind. The ability to
differentiate, to classify, categorize and to generalize must be learned, and
to succeed it must be based on factual accounts of material reality as it
exists, and not as we wish it were. These essays below are an attempt to look
beyond mere wish fulfillment, to offer readers factual elements with which to make their own
analyses of what is actually going down in today’s world and how this affects
them and those they love.
Francis Feeley
Professor emeritus of
American Studies
University
Grenoble-Alpes
Director of Research
University of
Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced
Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The University of
California-San Diego
a.
Is The Evidence of Global Warming Too Scary
For
Humans To Cope With?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50549.htm
by
Paul Craig Roberts
I
appreciate the numerous emails thanking me for providing an understandable
explanation of the global warming scenario. The book, Unprecedented Crime, about which I reported, caused me
to start thinking more seriously about man-made global warming. I already was
thinking about it, because capitalism owes its profits to the costs that it
imposes on the environment, costs that are external to the capitalist entity. I
have been thinking about this since I addressed “external costs” in my 2013
book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.
I am thinking that if man-made global warming is indeed in the cards, as the
current evidence supports, the external costs of capitalism will far exceed the
total value of all the goods produced over the course of the industrial revolution.
Past material comforts will be paid for by future curtailment of life on Earth.
Greed, gluttony, envy, lust, and pride will have proven to be the five of the
seven deadly sins that were deadly for planet Earth.
I
hope I can find the time and energy to get around to a book on the subject. For
now, like you, I am learning. It struck me, as it strikes many of you, how a
one or two degree rise in temperature can cause ice caps, glaciers, and the
Greenland ice shelf to melt. We don’t think of the Artic
or glaciers hovering on the temperature border of frozen and melting. It is not
intuitive that small changes can make such large differences.
Like
you, I also found it puzzling that as carbon dioxide is only a small part of
the atmosphere, how its increase can have such dangerous effects.
While
struggling to put what I learned into understandable language, I thankfully
came across this explanation in Scientific American:
“Small
changes in the Earth’s heat balance can lead to large climatic changes. For example,
the ice ages during the last several million years–and the warmer periods in
between–appear to have been triggered by no more than a different seasonal and
latitudinal distribution of the solar energy absorbed by the Earth, not by a
change in output from the sun. The geologic record shows that the differences
in ice cover, sea level and precipitation as well as in plant and animal
populations were quite dramatic between the ice ages and the warm interglacials. Yet the global average temperature differences
corresponding to these radically different climates were only about 5 degrees C
in the tropics and 8 degrees C in polar regions.”
In
case you don’t understand what is being said, the message is that very small
differences in temperature are the difference between ice ages and heat
extinction ages.
===========
b.
War and Poverty at the Heart of European & US Migration
Turmoil
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50590.htm
by Finian Cunningham
Europe has certainly adopted more fortress-like controls
against would-be refugees. A concomitant rise in anti-immigrant political
parties has in turn fueled popular resentment towards EU institutions.
But the debate requires much more than “moral
appeals.”
A recent study
entitled ‘Building Walls’ puts the growth of EU internal and external border
barriers into stark perspective. In the 1990s, there were two border walls. Now
the number has grown to a total of 17, with most of the structures built over
the past three years.
Ten countries out of 28 EU member states have built physical
barriers to control migrants entering from outside the bloc. They include
Austria, Spain, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Greece, Slovenia and Latvia.
The authors of the above report call the structures “edifices
of fear”
and make the startling comparison to the Berlin Wall that separated East and
West Germany until its dismantlement in 1989. EU states have built border
barriers equivalent to the length of six Berlin Walls.
The report also reproaches the proliferation of “mental
walls”
across EU member states with the rise of what it calls “far-right” and “racist” political
parties. There are now, it is claimed, 10 EU states in which “xenophobic” parties have
significant government or parliamentary representation.
Israel to Police European Coastlines – Protecting the Continent from Refugees?
by Peter Koenig
===========
A Celebration of Killing and Dying
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50585.htm
by Camillo Mac Bica
November 10th is the 242nd birthday of
the United State Marine Corps. It is a time of celebration during which current
and former Marines acknowledge the storied history and glorious traditions of
the branch of the military in which they so proudly served. I, however, am
torn. As a former Marine Corps officer with service during the Vietnam War, I
still occasionally admit to having been a Marine, perhaps also with a measure
of pride, Yet, I have realized that this admission encompasses more than the
pomp and pageantry that we celebrate each year on November 10th. I
realized what being a Marine actually entails, that as a young man I underwent,
perhaps endured is better, a profound life-altering experience, Marine Boot
Camp, during which everything I was, embraced, stood for, and held sacred, was
brutally and methodically destroyed, with the resultant void filled with the
values, “virtues,” and abilities appropriate to the role I was about to assume.
The Marine Corps builds men (and women), it is said, albeit
of a specific sort. I have realized that much of this physical, emotional,
psychological, and ethical conversion and conditioning process is intended to
create effective instruments of death and destruction, killing machines who
will do the bidding of our nation’s political and military leadership without
hesitation or question. I have realized that Marine training focuses on
building an intense fraternity and camaraderie with others who wear the
uniform. Anyone who has experienced the insanity of the battlefield understands
that when the shit hits the fan, we kill and sacrifice not for god, flag,
country, or even for Corps, but for the man or woman at our side.
I have realized that I and many others who claim the title of
Marine have had our selflessness, dedication, and patriotism exploited; asked,
better compelled, to make sacrifices fighting in wars that were (are)
ill-conceived, unnecessary, unjust, and immoral. I have realized that as a Marine
I was fighting not for freedom – ours, or in my case, the Vietnamese – a claim
we hear so often, and that I was an aggressor, invader, and occupier fighting
for corporate profit and national hegemony placed in an untenable survival
situation of kill or be killed.
+
War Criminals in High Office Commemorate the End of World War I
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50598.htm
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
In a bitter irony, several
of the World’s leaders who were “peacefully” commemorating the end of
World War I in Paris including Trump, Netanyahu, Macron and May are the
protagonists of war in Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen.
To put it bluntly they
are war criminals under international law.
They have blood on their
hands.
What on earth are they
commemorating?
In the words of Hans Stehling: “As We Honour the
15 Million Dead of 1914-1918, a Demented US President Flies into Paris with
Plans to Attack Iran” [with nuclear weapons] (Global Research, November 12, 2018)
Lest we forget: War is the
ultimate crime, “The Crime against Peace” as defined under Nuremberg.
===========
d.
Germany
on a Political Seesaw
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/13/germany-on-a-political-seesaw/
by
Victor
Grossman
While
Americans teetered, arguing as to which side gained more in the elections, Germans have been balancing on a seesaw of their
own – which can also have decisive consequences.
Seated
precariously on the descending side are the ruling parties of the Grand
Coalition – GroKo in German journalese. When on
October 14th the Christian Social Union (CSU) in Bavaria, the
unique one-state subsidiary of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union
(CDU),” got the worst result anyone could recall in a state election, the blow
sent shock waves through the whole country. It was still
the strongest party in this biggest German state but must now share cabinet
seats with an equally conservative local breakaway party. All exertions of its
fading king-pin, Horst Seehofer, who tried to win
points by attacking and insulting his ally Angela
Merkel from the right, failed miserably. So did his attempts – he’s still
Federal Interior Minister – to save the head of the Bureau to Protect the
Constitution (like the FBI), who had become all too openly pro-fascist. It
looks as if the amused-smiling Seehofer will soon
follow his appointee into involuntary retirement and right-wing Bavarian
loud-voiced pride – recalling old Texas in a way – was reduced to a rather
hoarse croak.
Two
weeks later came the next blow. The wealthy state of Hesse,
with its center in Frankfurt/Main, was a stronghold of the Social Democrats
(SPD) for decades. Then they were pushed out by the Christian Democrats, often
using racist stereotyping propaganda. The state elections on October 28th shocked
them both. The SPD was reduced to a pitiful relic, under
20 %, while the CDU got its worst result in 50 years.
===========
e.
BRICS: A Future in Limbo?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50593.htm
by Peter Koenig
The BRICS are not what they intended to be, never really
were.
Today it’s clear that fascist-turned Brazil is out – so we
are at RICS. There is not much to argue about. The world’s fifth largest
economy, Brazil, has failed and betrayed the concept of the BRICS and the world
at large. Whether you consider South Africa as a valid member of the BRICS is
also questionable. Much of SA’s social injustice has actually become worse
since the end of apartheid. Ending apartheid was a mere political and legal
exercise.
Distribution of power and money in SA have
not really changed. To the contrary, it worsened. 80% of all land is still in
the hands of white farmers. This is what President Cyril Ramaphosa
wants to change drastically, by confiscating white farmers’ land without
compensation and re-distribute it to black farmers, who have no formation of
how to run these farms. This is not only utterly unjust and will create
internal conflicts, the last thing SA needs, but it is also very inefficient,
as farming and agricultural production will decline most likely drastically and
SA, a potential exporter of farm and agricultural goods, will become a net
importer, a serious hit on South African’s economy.
The principle of redistributing land to the black African
society is a solid one. But not by force and not by confiscation without
compensation, nor without an elaborate training program for African farmers –
to lead to a peaceful transfer – all of which does takes time and cannot happen
over-night. There are too many examples of rush-rush land reforms that failed miserably
and actually plunged entire societies into poverty and famine. Land reforms –
YES, but planned and well organized and strategized. Land reforms are long-term
propositions. To be successful, they don’t happen over night.
===========
f.
The Unreal World of US Elections – Fake As A Pro Wrestling Match
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50571.htm
If US
Politics Were Real, A Massive Blue Wave Would Be 100% Certain
by
Caitlin Johnstone
I
haven’t been writing about the US midterms much, because I don’t care about
that nonsense anymore. The whole thing’s a fake pro wrestling performance
staged every couple of years to give a heavily armed populace the illusory
sense that they have some degree of control over the things their government
does.
By this
I do not mean that the votes aren’t real or that the outcomes are
predetermined, I simply mean that both mainstream parties are controlled by
plutocrats who benefit from the status quo and are only interested in their own
power and profit.
No
matter who wins on Tuesday, the wars are guaranteed to continue, the oligarchs
are guaranteed to keep siphoning more and more money out of the pockets of
ordinary Americans, opaque and unaccountable intelligence agencies are
guaranteed to continue expanding intrusive surveillance practices and narrative
control psyops in collaboration with powerful Silicon
Valley corporations, and we’re guaranteed to keep hurtling toward climate
catastrophe on the back of an economic system which requires infinite growth on
a finite planet.
===========
g.
Saudi Arabia Has To Be
Stopped And This Time It May Get Stopped
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50580.htm
by Andre Vltchek
It appears that the KSA has crossed all lines of
decency, if there were ever any.
In the eyes of many in the West, it crossed them not
because it has been brutally killing tens of thousands of
innocent people in Yemen, not even because it keeps sponsoring terrorists in
Syria, (and in fact all over the world), often on behalf of the West. And not even because it is trying to turn its neighboring country,
Qatar, from a peninsula into an island.
The crimes against humanity committed by Saudi
Arabia are piling up, but the hermit kingdom (it is so
hermit that it does not even issue tourist visas, in order to avoid scrutiny)
is not facing any sanctions or embargos, with some exceptions like Germany.
These are some of the most barbaric crimes committed in modern history,
anywhere and by anyone. Executing and then quartering people, amputating their
limbs, torturing, bombing civilians.
But for years and decades, all this mattered
nothing. Saudi Arabia served faithfully both big business and
the political interests of the United Kingdom first, and of the West in general
later. That of course includes Israel, with which the House of Saud
shares almost a grotesque hatred towards Shi’a Islam.
===========
h.
Bin
Salman 'tried to persuade Netanyahu to go to war in
Gaza': Sources
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-israel-gaza-khashoggi-1952586885
by David Hearst
War
was among scenarios suggested by damage-limitation task force established to
advise Saudi crown prince in aftermath of Khashoggi
killing
Saudi
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attempted to
persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to start a conflict with Hamas
in Gaza as part of a plan to divert attention from the killing of journalist
Jamal Khashoggi, sources inside Saudi Arabia have
told Middle East Eye.
A
war in Gaza was among a range of measures and scenarios proposed by an
emergency task force set up to counter increasingly damaging leaks about Khashoggi's murder coming from Turkish authorities,
according to sources with knowledge of the group's activities.
The
task force, which is composed of officials from the royal court, the foreign
and defence ministries, and the intelligence service,
briefs the the crown prince every six hours, MEE was
told. It advised bin Salman that a war in Gaza would
distract Trump's attention and refocus Washington’s attention on the role Saudi
Arabia plays in bolstering Israeli strategic interests. It also advised bin Salman to “neutralise Turkey by
all means” - including attempts to bribe Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan with offers
to buy Turkish arms and statements by the crown prince attempting to shore up
relations between Riyadh and Ankara.
Why is Benjamin Netanyahu defending Mohammed bin Salman?
===========
i.
Israel Sabotages Ceasefire Talks, Assassinating Hamas
Commander, IDF Senior Commander Also Killed
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50595.htm
by Richard Silverstein
(November 12, 2018)
Today, IDF commandos invaded
Gaza in a night-time raid and murdered seven Hamas operatives,
including the commander responsible for the tunnel defense system maintained by
the Islamist rulers of the enclave. According to various media sources,
the raid was exposed and Palestinian militants fought back fiercely. In
order to free the IDF forces, the Israelis had to lay down a massive drone and
air attack which permitted them to withdraw back to Israel.
The Israeli military censor has prohibited domestic media naming the Israeli commando who was killed. But an Israeli source has informed me he is Lt. Col. Mahmoud Kheireddine from the Druze village of Hurfeish. Another officer who was wounded is from Isfiya.
They both served in Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s
equivalent of the Navy SEALs. Kheireddine was deputy
commander of the unit. Given the death
of so high-ranking an IDF officer, something went terribly wrong on this
mission.
In response, Hamas has launched
missiles into southern Israel and driven hundreds of thousands into air raid
shelters. Once again, just as both sides
thought they might be close to a ceasefire and/or a prisoner exchange, Israel
rescued defeat from the jaws and victory and almost guaranteed a new
escalation, if not war, against Gaza.
+
Israel kills
seven Palestinians in covert Gaza raid
Senior Hamas commander killed by Israeli special forces in cross-border
operation in which one Israeli soldier died.
Israeli
forces killed seven Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in a clandestine raid
targeting a Hamas commander and air attacks that provided cover for the
commandos to escape back into Israel by car.
The Israeli
incursion and air attacks drew rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled enclave
late on Sunday. A senior Hamas official said the Israeli special
forces team infiltrated an area near the southern city of Khan Younis in a civilian vehicle.
Among those
reported killed in the attack was Nour Baraka, a prominent commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.
A ground
operation inside the Gaza Strip is rare and it is likely to raise tensions
significantly.
+
John Bolton
Wins “Defender of Israel” Award from Zionist Lobby Group
The ZOA,
Bolton’s enthusiastic sponsor, led the campaign to remove former National
Security Adviser H.R. McMaster from his post after railing against McMaster’s
“anti-Israel” positions, most notably his support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal.
===========
j.
The
Unraveling Of The Netanyahu Project For The Middle
East
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50591.htm
by Alastair Crooke
Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli commentator, writing in Yedioth Ahronoth in May (in
Hebrew), set out, unambiguously, the ‘deal’ behind Trump’s Middle East policy:
In the wake of the US exit from JCPOA [which occurred on 8 May], Trump, Barnea wrote, will threaten a rain of ‘fire and fury’ onto
Tehran … whilst Putin is expected to restrain Iran from attacking Israel using
Syrian territory, thus leaving Netanyahu free to set new ‘rules of the game’ by
which the Israel may attack and destroy Iranian forces anywhere in Syria (and
not just in the border area, as earlier agreed) when it wishes, without fear of
retaliation.
This
represented one level to the Netanyahu strategy: Iranian restraint, plus
Russian acquiescence to coordinated Israeli air operations over Syria. “There
is only one thing that isn’t clear [concerning this deal]”, a senior Israeli Defence official closest to Netanyahu, told Ben Caspit,“that is, who
works for whom? Does Netanyahu work for Trump, or is President Trump at the service
of Netanyahu … From the outside … it looks like the two men are perfectly in
sync. From the inside, this seems even more so: This kind of cooperation …
sometimes makes it seem as if they are actually just one single, large office”.
There has
been, from the outset, a second level, too: This entire ‘inverted pyramid’ of
Middle East engineering had, as its single point of departure, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). It was Jared
Kushner, the Washington Post reports, who
“championed Mohammed as a reformer poised to usher the ultraconservative,
oil-rich monarchy into modernity. Kushner privately argued for months, last
year, that Mohammed would be key to crafting a Middle East peace plan, and that
with the prince’s blessing, much of the Arab world would follow”. It was
Kushner, the Post continued, “who pushed his father-in-law to make his first
foreign trip as president to Riyadh, against objections from then-Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson – and warnings from Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis”.
Well, now MbS has, in one form or another, been implicated in the Khashoggi murder.
Bruce Riedel of Brookings, a longtime Saudi observer and former senior
CIA & US defence official, notes, "for the
first time in 50 years, the kingdom has become a force for instability” (rather
than stability in the region), and suggests that there is an element of ‘buyer’s remorse’ now evident in parts of
Washington.
The ‘seamless
office process’ to which the Israeli official referred with Caspit,
is known as ‘stovepiping’, which is when a foreign
state’s policy advocacy and intelligence are passed straight to a President’s
ear – omitting official Washington from the ‘loop’; by-passing any US
oversight; and removing the opportunity for officials to advise on its content. Well, this has now resulted in the Khashoggi strategic blunder. And this, of course, comes in the wake of
earlier strategic ‘mistakes’: the Yemen war, the siege of Qatar, the Hariri
abduction, the Ritz-Carlton princely shakedowns.
To remedy
this lacuna, an ‘uncle’ (Prince Ahmad bin Abdel Aziz) has been dispatched from exile in the West to Riyadh (with
security guarantees from the US and UK intelligences services) to bring order
into these unruly affairs, and to institute some checks and balances into the MbS coterie of advisers, so as to prevent further impetuous
‘mistakes’. It seems too, that the US
Congress wants the Yemen war, which Prince Ahmad consistently has opposed (as
he opposed MbS elevation as Crown Prince), stopped.(General Mattis has called for a
ceasefire within 30 days.) It is a step toward repairing the Kingdom’s image.
MbS remains – for now – as Crown Prince. President Sisi and Prime Minister Netanyahu both have expressed their support for MbS and “as U.S. officials contemplate a
more robust response [to the Khashoggi killing],
Kushner has emphasized the importance of the U.S.-Saudi alliance in the
region”, the Washington Post reports. MbS’ Uncle (who
as a son of King Abdel Aziz, under the traditional succession system, would be
himself in line for the throne), no doubt hopes to try
to undo some of the damage done to the standing of the al-Saud family, and to
that of the Kingdom. Will he
succeed? Will MbS
accede now to Ahmad unscrambling the very centralisation
of power that made MbS so many enemies, in the first
place, to achieve it? Has the al-Saud
family the will, or are they
too disconcerted by events?
===========
k.
Why America?
Mass Shootings & White Nationalism Share Roots
https://therealnews.com/stories/why-america-mass-shootings-white-nationalism-share-roots
with Abby Martin
Since October
2017, America experienced three of the deadliest mass shootings in modern
history. This epidemic coincides with a frightening resurgence of white
nationalism. Sometimes the two trends overlap.
===========
l.
From which
man above would you buy a used car?
Crucifying
Julian Assange
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/crucifying-julian-assange/
by Chris Hedges
Julian Assange’s sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has
been transformed into a little shop of horrors. He has been largely cut off
from communicating with the outside world for the last seven months. His
Ecuadorian citizenship, granted to him as an asylum seeker, is in the process
of being revoked. His health is failing. He is being denied medical care. His
efforts for legal redress have been crippled by the gag rules, including Ecuadorian
orders that he cannot make public his conditions inside the embassy in fighting
revocation of his Ecuadorian citizenship.
Australian
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to intercede on behalf of Assange, an Australian citizen, even though the new
government in Ecuador, led by Lenín Moreno—who calls Assange an “inherited problem” and an impediment to better
relations with Washington—is making the WikiLeaks
founder’s life in the embassy unbearable. Almost daily, the embassy is imposing
harsher conditions for Assange, including making him
pay his medical bills, imposing arcane rules about how he must care for his cat
and demanding that he perform a variety of demeaning housekeeping chores.
The
Ecuadorians, reluctant to expel Assange after
granting him political asylum and granting him citizenship, intend to make his
existence so unpleasant he will agree to leave the embassy to be arrested by
the British and extradited to the United States. The former president of
Ecuador, Rafael Correa, whose government granted the publisher political
asylum, describes Assange’s current living conditions
as “torture.”
+
Justice for Assange –
The Latest
debacle of 2018
https://prepareforchange.net/2018/11/12/justice-for-assange-the-latest-debacle-of-2018/
+
United States
Will Bring Assange to US in Chains
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/11/14/us-intel-will-bring-assange-to-us-in-chains/
by Ann Garrison
It appears
increasingly likely Wikileaks founder and publisher
Julian Assange will wind up in the clutches of the
U.S. government.
It’s hardly
surprising, given that in ten years’ time, Wikileaks
published more classified information than all other media combined. It exposed
human rights abuses, government spying, torture, and war crimes on an
unprecedented scale. WikiLeaks put government,
corporations and even the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA and other intel agencies on notice that they
could no longer count on operating in secret. It created a trove of primary
source material that serious journalists and researchers will mine for years to
come. Its publications are accessible to readers who prefer primary sources to
mostly mediated news.
Wikileaks so infuriates the USA’s most violent, corrupt, and
criminal institutions that Hillary Clinton half-jokingly suggested
drone-bombing Assange. Other U.S. politicians called
for his execution by other means. California’s 28th District Congressman Adam
Schiff, who became the chair of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats
reclaimed the House, said he would speak to Assange
“when he is in U.S. custody, not before.”
Schiff is a
vociferous and supremely self-righteous leader of the Democratic Party’s
“Resistance,” which sullies the name of the underground movement formed in
France during World War II to fight Nazi Germany’s occupying forces and the
collaborationist Vichy government. The “Resistance” tolerates only one truth
and one loyalty: Russia is the enemy, interfering in Syria, the Ukraine and
even U.S. elections. Russia elected Trump with Wikileaks’
help, it says. Russia dares to position missiles on its own borders, it says,
to respond to NATO’s missiles on the other side. The U.S. must build more
missiles, more drones, more nuclear weapons, and every other sort of weapon to
defend the European world against Russia and its ally China.
Moral and
Racial Superiority
Moral and
racial superiority entitles the U.S. to occupy the world with military bases,
ringing any nation that challenges its hegemony with military aircraft,
battleships, assault vehicles, and military surveillance. Moral and racial
superiority entitles its spy state agencies to shut down access to information
deviating from its narratives and therefore to arrest and extradite Julian Assange.
===========
m.
Help
MintPress News Fight for Truth in the Face of Social Media Censorship
A.
Noam Chomsky
Warns of the Rise of ‘Judeo-Nazi Tendencies’ in Israel
B.
Israel to Police European Coastlines – Protecting the Continent from
Refugees?
C.
Saudi
Intelligence Met with Trump Admin and Mossad
To Discuss
Iran Sabotage and Assassinations
A plan to use
private intelligence operatives to sabotage Iran was developed by Trump
confidant George Nade and Joel Zamel,
an Israeli known for his “deep ties” to Israeli intelligence and security
agencies.
===========
n.
Why is Israel
tossing a lifeline to Jamal Khashoggi’s killers?
by Jackson Diehl
+
Is Israel
turning a blind eye as Israeli scammers swindle victims
in France, US, elsewhere?
by Alison Weir
o.
Amazon Is
Everything That's Wrong With America
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/robert-reich-amazon-is-everything-thats-wrong-with-america/
by Robert Reich
While America
was fixated on the most tumultuous midterm election in modern history, Amazon
reportedly decided that its much-vaunted “second headquarters” would be split
between Long Island City in Queens, and Crystal City, across the Potomac from
Washington, D.C.
What does
Amazon’s decision have to do with America’s political tumult? Turns out, quite a lot.
Amazon’s main
headquarters is in Seattle, one of the bluest cities in the bluest of states.
New York and metropolitan Washington are true-blue, too.
Amazon could
have decided to locate its second headquarters in, say, Indianapolis, Indiana. Indianapolis
vigorously courted the firm. Indianapolis is also a Republican city in a bright
red state.
Amazon’s
decision wasn’t based on political partisanship, but it reveals much about the
real political and economic divide in America today.
Amazon’s
business isn’t just selling stuff over the Internet. It’s getting consumers
anything they want, faster and better. To do so, it depends on a continuous
flow of great new ideas.
Like the
other leading firms of the economy, Amazon needs talented people who interact
with each other continuously and directly – keying off one another’s
creativity, testing new concepts, quickly discarding those that don’t work, and
building cumulative knowledge.
Technology
isn’t a thing. It’s a process of group learning. And that learning goes way
beyond the confines of any individual company. It happens in geographic
clusters, now mostly along the coasts.
As the Times’
Emily Badger has reported, the digital economy has been great for places like
Seattle, New York, metropolitan Washington, and the other big talent hubs like
San Francisco, Boston, and LA. But it’s left behind much of the rest of the
country.
The result is
widening inequalities of place.
===========
p.
Banksy's art highlighting occupation angers Israeli
peace-pretender
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/11/11/579674/Israel-Palestine-poster-Bansky
A
British-Israeli art collector who claims to be an advocate of peace between
Palestine and Israel has been angered at the way British artist Banksy has depicted Israel’s long years of occupation of
Palestine.
Batia Ofer, the wife of London-based
Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer,
said Saturday that the way the British underground artist had depicted Israel’s
presence in the occupied West Bank in a recent poster was more anti-Semtic than artistic.
In his poster
meant for encouraging tourism in the West Bank, Banksy
depicted children on a fair riding around a watchtower in the occupied
territory. A slogan written underneath the poster reads, “Visit historic
Palestine, the Israeli army liked it so much they never left!”
===========
q.
Israeli
forces shoot, injure dozens of Palestinian students in occupied West Bank
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/11/11/579722/Israeli-forces-shoot-injure-dozens-of-Palestinian-students-in-occupied-West-Bank
(November 11,
2018)
Dozens of
Palestinian students have sustained gunshot wounds and several others suffered
tear gas inhalation when Israeli military forces stormed a school in the
central part of the occupied West Bank.
Local
sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israeli troops raided the
high school in the town of Tuqu’, located 12 kilometers
southeast of Bethlehem, on Sunday, and fired tear gas canisters and
rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinian students.
Sources also
confirmed that Israeli forces briefly detained the school’s principal and other
staff members.
Israeli
forces forced the students and staff members to evacuate the premises, and then
took control of the high school and shut it down.
They later
sealed off the two main entrances to the town.
+
Israeli
Defense Minister Resigns Over Gaza Cease-Fire Deal
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/israeli-defense-minister-resigns-over-gaza-cease-fire-deal/
===========
r.
White House
is helping cover up Khashoggi murder: Former CIA
officer
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/amp/white-house-is-helping-cover-up-khashoggi-murder-former-cia-officer-138846
A former CIA
case officer and intelligence analyst for CNN claimed the Trump administration is helping the Saudis cover up
journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder, according to Business Insider.
Speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper on Nov. 13, Bob Baer, who worked at a CIA case officer primarily in the Middle East, said the US has purposely muted its response to Khashoggi's murder. "We've always turned a blind eye to what's going on in Saudi Arabia," he told CNN. Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and US resident, was murdered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly shifted its version of the events that transpired that day, and it has fired five top officials and arrested 18 Saudis it says are connected to the killing.
Turkish police find hydrofluoric acid at Saudi consul’s home after Khashoggi killing: Report
MIT and
Harvard reconsidering Saudi ties after Khashoggi
murder
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/13/saudi-arabia-mit-harvard-funding-mohammed-bin-salman-reconsidering-khashoggi
Saudi Arabia
has paid more than $350m to dozens of US universities since 2011 – and now
those institutions are re-examining it amid growing questions from their
communities.
Last March,
Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, came to the
United States with a mission: to boost his image as a moderniser, liberaliser and reformer at a time when he stood
accused of war crimes in Yemen and had recently consolidated power by jailing
rivals, critics, rights activists and even family members.
Saudi
Arabia says it is a beacon of light fighting ‘dark’ Iran
Over
the course of his three-week trip he appeared alongside American giants of
government, business and entertainment, inking lucrative business deals while letting the celebrity and
reputation of people such as Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and
Dwayne Johnson rub off on him. One of his most important stops was Boston,
where he crossed the Charles River with his entourage to visit Harvard and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, two of the world’s most prestigious
universities. On their campuses, the crown prince met with administrators and
presided over the signing of fresh agreements with the universities. At the
time, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) president Rafael Reif hailed the young authoritarian, saying: “The kingdom is accelerating
its progress toward a promising new future.”
Harvard
and MIT are anchors of innovation and progress – as well as institutions that
champion free speech. To be hosted and lauded by them was a powerful seal of
approval for the future king.
+
How
Khashoggi was killed: Erdogan says chilling audio sent to Saudi Arabia, US, UK,
France & Germany
https://www.rt.com/news/443618-erdogan-khashoggi-recordings-us-saudi/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=push_notifications
Turkish
President Erdogan said that Khashoggi
murder was ordered at the “highest levels” of the Saudi government. © AFP / Adem Altan; © Middle East Monitor
/ Handout via Reuters; © Saudi Royal Palace / Bandar al-Jaloud
The
recordings that could reveal the killing of Jamal Khashoggi
at the Saudi embassy in Turkey in shocking detail have been shared with France,
Germany, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and the US, President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has said.
“They all know since they all listened to the conversations and everything,” Erdogan said in a televised speech on Saturday. Erdogan also accused Saudi Arabia of knowing that the
killer of the former Washington Post columnist is among a group of 15 Saudis
who touched down in Turkey the day prior to the killing, leaving again for
Riyadh in the hours following Khashoggi’s death.
“Saudi Arabia
could resolve this by making this 15 talk,” Erdogan said.
“The murderers are surely among this 15 or 18, there's no need to look
elsewhere.”
Ankara has
claimed to have had audio of the blood-curdling murder ever since the
journalist went missing on October 2, after going inside the Saudi consulate in
Istanbul, never to be seen again. Unconfirmed reports of the contents of
gruesome tape allege that Khashoggi was grabbed,
drugged and dismembered on a tape with a bone saw. The voice attributed to a
Saudi forensic evidence chief also suggests that others witnessing Khashoggi’s harrowing fate listened to music in order to
drown out the sounds
American
officials have heard audio of journalist's murder, but White House refuses to
take action
|
===========
s.
Cultural Imperialism:
Linguistic Perversion and Obfuscation of Empire Building
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50605.htm
In the
contemporary world, western imperialist propagandists, particularly journalists
and editors of the mass media, have resorted to perverting everyday concepts
and the language of politics.
The use and
abuse of the language of politics has served to blame victims and to justify
imperial aggressors. The consequences are multiple, both in legitimizing war
crimes and economic plunder, as well as neutralizing domestic opposition. We
will proceed by identifying the key terminology which furthers imperial aggression.
We will then describe the economic and political objectives of linguistic
imperialism. We will conclude by examining the political/cultural alternatives.
Critique of
Concepts: Nationalism and Populism
The most
abused and obfuscated concept in the modern imperial lexicon is ‘populism’. In
its original meaning ‘populism’ referred to mass movements composed of
exploited workers. Popular movements
fought oligarchical bankers and media moguls.
At the turn
of the 19th and the early decades of the 20th century, populists formed
powerful political movements and electoral parties in the US, Canada, Russia and Western
Europe. By the mid 20th century, populist parties and movements multiplied, and
in some cases, came to power in Asia and Latin America. Populist movements gained
mass support in Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Mexico. In the United States populist parties and
movement represented farmers who fought railroad monopolies, bankers and
corrupt political bosses. Their
objective was to secure fair market prices for transport ,
moderate interest rates from banks and honest elections, free of corruption by
political bosses.Populists elected several governors,scores of mayors and several state legislaturers.
In Latin
America, populist parties in Peru (APRA) fought for indigenous rights,
opposing neo-colonial and oligarchical rule.In Argentina,
Brazil and Mexico populist parties led by Juan Peron, Getulio
Vargas and Lazaro Cardenas fought and secured
workers’ rights, and national ownership of essential resources (especially the
oil fields). They successfully launched
national industrialization programs. Similar developments took place in China,
the Philippines, Indo-China and India.
Nationalism and populism were the twin motors of independence and social
justice.
Nationalism
was based on ending imperial domination and recovering national cultural values
free from colonial impositions. By the turn of the 21st century with the rise
and advance of post-colonial regimes, the western imperial powers sought to
denigrate the movements and parties which questioned their legitimacy. No
longer could the imperial powers rely on the ideology of beneficent empires
(“the white mans’ burden”). Nor could they claim that foreign capital
exploitation and pillage were serving ‘nation-building’. Imperial ideology
resorted to distorting and reverting the positive concepts associated with
liberation struggles into their opposite.
Instead they associated populism with oppressive and authoritarian
doctrines of regressive regimes.
Populism was
emptied of its original emancipatory content and
replaced by, and associated with reactionary, racist, xenophobic,
anti-immigrant, fascist ideology.
Israel Wins
2018 Midterm Election
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50600.htm
No matter who
is elected Israel comes first
by Philip Giraldi
Judging from
the mainstream media, Israel was not a major issue in the midterm election but
it sure did come up a lot when candidates for office were wooing Jewish or
Evangelical voters. To cite only one example, Florida Congressman Ron DeSantis criticized his opponent Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum during their gubernatorial race for receiving
support from the Dream Defenders, a group favoring Boycott, Divestment, and
Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and giving a speech welcoming members of the
Council on American-Islamic Relations to his city. DeSantis
claimed in a videoclip that
“I can find anti-Semites around him, but it’s almost like ‘we don’t want to
discuss that.’”
DeSantis, who sponsored the 2013 Palestinian Accountability Act
which called for the withholding of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until
it recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, charged that Gillum
would not be a “friend” of Israel. In 2017, he co-founded the
Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, saying “Israel is our strongest ally in
the Middle East, as we share common national interests and possess similar
national values. Israel is not the problem in the Middle East; it is the
solution to many of the problems that bedevil the region. American policy must
ensure that Israel emerges victorious against those who deny or threaten her
existence.” Earlier this year, DeSantis drafted a proposal calling on the U.S. to
recognize Syria’s Golan Heights as an ‘integral part’ of the State of Israel.
DeSantis boasted about his presence
in Jerusalem when the U.S. Embassy was moved to that city in May and has
promised as governor to visit Israel’s illegal settlements on the West Bank,
which he refers to by the preferred Israeli usage as “Judea and Samaria.” He
threatens critics that “If you boycott Israel, the state of Florida will
boycott you.”
One might
note at a minimum that for Ron DeSantis and ambitious
slimeballs like him it is all about Israel due to
their own political self-interest, with nothing actually in the mix for either
Florida or the United States. The uninformed public buys into the narrative
because it doesn’t know any better thanks to the media’s heavy slant in favor of
Israel, allowing uncritical support for the Jewish state to continue under the
radar unchallenged. DeSantis, a former U.S. Navy
lawyer, has demonstrated that he reveres Israel even more than his former
comrades in arms. In his congressional district there are a number of survivors
of the U.S.S. Liberty, which was attacked in international waters by Israel on
June 8, 1967, killing 34 crewmen and injuring 171 more. They report that DeSantis has been completely unsympathetic to their
requests that a commission of inquiry finally be convened to determine what
actually happened on that day.
In fact,
Americans have never had the option of voting on the “special relationship”
that Israel enjoys with the United States as no Congressman would dare run
against it lest they be smeared in the media and find themselves
running against an extraordinarily well funded opponent benefitting from large
donations coming from out of state sources. The list of prominent politicians
“taken down” by Israel is lengthy, and includes Cynthia McKinney, Adlai
Stevenson III, Paul Findley, Chuck Percy, William Fulbright, Roger Jepsen, and Pete McCloskey.
It is
particularly ironic that as the midterm campaigns were drawing to a close there
appeared some serious investigative journalism that demonstrates precisely how
Israel and Jewish groups corrupt the political process in America to provide
virtually unlimited support for anything and everything that the despicable
Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang of war criminals seek to do. How the process
has succeeded is best illustrated by the current Israeli government’s policy of
“mowing the grass” in Gaza where it is using army snipers to kill unarmed
Palestinian protesters. Washington not only does not protest against the
in-your-face war crime, it aids and abets it with U.S. Ambassador David
Friedman justifying the military response as measured and appropriate.
Another area
where Washington chooses to look the other way is regarding Israel’s nuclear
arsenal, believed to consist of two hundred warheads. Under U.S. law, any
country that has an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal cannot obtain
American-made weapons and cannot received aid of any type. Congress and the
White House pretend that the Israeli nuclear arsenal does not exist, in spite
of the fact that the Israelis themselves have more than once implicitly
acknowledged it and instead of cutting aid to Israel have instead increased it.
It is currently $3.8 billion per year guaranteed for the next ten years, with
extra money also available if needed. No other country benefits from such
largesse and gives in return so little.
To be sure,
the groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer,
which appeared in 2007, pulled no punches in describing how the Israel Lobby
operates in the United States. It also made clear that the relationship with
Israel serves no United States national interest whatsoever and exists solely
because of the corruption of the political system and the media by principally
Jewish individuals and groups that are dedicated to that task.
+
Israel Defence Minister Lieberman resigns over Gaza ceasefire
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-46207094
Israel's defence minister has resigned over the cabinet's decision
to accept a ceasefire ending two days of fighting with Palestinian militants in
Gaza.
Avigdor Lieberman denounced the move as "surrendering to
terror".
He said his
right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party would leave the ruling coalition, which could lead to an early election.
Eight people
were killed on Monday and Tuesday as militants fired 460 rockets towards Israel
and Israeli forces bombed 160 targets in Gaza.
+
Warning that occupation is turning Israeli Jews into Judeo-Nazis very relevant – Chomsky
https://www.rt.com/news/443954-judeo-nazis-chomski-leibowitz/