Bulletin N° 877

 

 

The Minds of Men

 https://youtu.be/LQucESRF3Sg

(3:42:35)

What is the Science of Government? The Minds of Men is a three-year investigation into the experimentation, art, and practice of social engineering and mind control during the Cold War. Why would the federal government take such a tragic and horrendous action as to approve the rampant use of a brain-damaging “treatment”? This new film may have the answer. “The Minds of Men” is produced by Aaron and Melissa Dykes, who have uncovered previously unknown information about the history of covert and often shameful research on mind control.

 

 

Subject :  “The best-laid plans of mice and men oft’ go astray.”

 

 

 

 

January 26, 2020

Grenoble, France

 

Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,

 

A careful reading of the massive second volume of Fernand Braudel’s (1902-1985) epic  three-volume history, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world of Philip II (1949 & 1995) – which provides a panoramic view of the Mediterranean world in the second half of the sixteenth century – offers rich insights into the natural environment and material conditions of the general population. It, also, offers a cogent analysis of political, diplomatic, economic and demographic events, as the expressions of conjunctures of material conditions.

 

The power of l’histoire de longue durée is that it exposes the universal constraints which govern the thinking and behavior of entire populations. Braudel, as the dominant leader of the Annales School of historiography in France in the 1950s and 1960s, was influential in emphasizing socioeconomic factors in the study of history, looking beyond individuals and singular events for a systemic explanation of the past. It was here that he promoted an approach to historical study that emphasized the permanent or nearly permanent structures in society, which he termed the longue durée; then developed it as  part of a tripartite system which includes short-term événements (which can  cast light on existing structures, analogous to the ephemeral glow from a firefly) and medium-term conjunctures (periods of decades or centuries, which might be compared to the eruption of a volcano or an earthquake) when more profound cultural changes can occur.

 

 

In a tentative conclusion to a chapter on “Societies,” he writes about Mediterranean society in the second half of the 16th century that, “A slow, powerful and deep-seated movement seems gradually to have twisted and transformed the societies of the Mediterranean between 1550 and 1600.”

 

There can be no doubt that society was tending to polarize into, on the one hand, a rich and vigorous nobility reconstituted into powerful dynasties owning vast properties and, on the other, the great and growing mass of the poor and disinherited, ‘caterpillars and grubs’, human insects, alas too many. A deep fissure split open traditional society, opening up gulfs which nothing would ever bridge, not even, as I have already remarked, the astonishing move towards charity in the Catholic world at the end of the sixteenth century. In England, France, Italy, Spain, and Islam, society was undermined by this dramatic upheaval, the full horror of which was to be revealed in the seventeenth century.  The creeping evil reached states as well as societies, societies as well as civilizations. This crisis coloured the lives of men. If the rich stooped to debauchery, mingling with the crowd they despised, it was because society stood on two banks facing each other: on one side the house of nobles, over-populated with servants; on the other picardia, the world of the black market, theft, debauchery, adventure, but above all poverty, just as the purest, the most exalted religious passion coexisted with the most incredible baseness and brutality, Here, some will say, are the astonishing and marvelous contradictions of the Baroque. Not so; these were the contradictions, not of the Baroque but of the society which produced it and which it only imperfectly conceals. And at the heart of that society lay bitter despair.(pp.755-756)

 

In another chapter, entitled “Civilization,” Braudel writes of the “prodigious growth of Rome” during the fifty years before 1600.

 

     Who can say what support the religious orders, often released, in order to do battle, from the old restrictions of choral life and monastic observance, vrais clers réguliers’, brought to the papacy? Thanks to them the Church was saved; it was able , from Rome, to coordinate one of the most extraordinary revolutions from above in history. The battle it fought was waged with intelligence. The civilization it carried forward – whatever  name we choose to give it – was a militant civilization; and its art was merely one more means to an end.

 

     Baroque art then, often smacks of propaganda. In some respects it is an art done to order, with all the advantages and disadvantages that implies. Shrewd theologians and friars demanded of Rubens, Caracciolo, Domenichino, Ribera, Zurbaran or Murillo, the physical execution of pictures spiritually composed by themselves, turning them down if the execution appeared in any way deficient. In the fight against Protestantism, the enemy of decorated churches and images, the Church set out to build the most beautiful houses of God on earth, images of Paradise, portions of heaven. Art was a powerful means of combat and instruction; a means of stating, through the power of the image, the Immaculate Holiness of the Mother of God, the efficacious intervention of the saints, the reality and power of the Eucharistic sacrifice, the eminence of St. Peter, a means of arguing from the visions and ecstasies of the saints. Patiently compiled and transmitted, identical iconographical themes crossed and re- crossed Europe. If Baroque exaggerates, if it is attracted by death and suffering, by martyrs depicted with unsparing realism, it seems to have abandoned itself to a pessimistic view, to the Spanish desengaño of the seventeenth century, it is because this is an art which is preoccupied with convincing, because it desperately seeks the dramatic detail which will strike and hold the beholder’s attention. It was intended for the use of the faithful, who were to be persuaded and gripped by it, who were to be taught by active demonstration, by an early version of verismo, the truth of certain contested notions, whether Purgatory or of the immaculate Conception. It was a theatrical art and one conscious its theatricality: had not the theater itself provided the Jesuits with arms , notably in their conquest of Germany, in an age moreover when the theater was establishing its rights everywhere, with strolling players and before long fixed stages?

 

     So it was both a way of life and a way of belief which travelled northwards from the shores of the Mediterranean, towards the Rhine and the Danube as well as to Paris, the heart of France, where in the early years of the seventeenth century so many churches and convents were being built. It was a way of life and belief specifically Mediterranean: witness Jacob Burckhardt’s description of Pius II processing through Viterbo ‘surrounded by live tableaux representing the Last Supper, St. Michael battling with the Devil, the Resurrection of the Lord and the Virgin carried in triumph to heaven by Angels. One immediately thinks of Spanish processions with the tratos representing scenes from the Passion; no more than in Italy does this exclude autos sacramentales. This then was a dramatic form of Christianity which northerners found astonishing. The manner of devotion and the flagellation practiced by Spaniards shocked and scandalized the people of Flanders. Baroque art, nourished on this southern religiosity, carried something of it to the North. A whole book could be written on the devotional practices imported to all parts of Europe, on the part played by men of the Mediterranean in the violent reclamation of the contested lands of the North which returned to the fold of the Roman Church. Remembering this, one can no longer talk of the decadence of the Mediterranean; unless decadence and the disintegration it implies can be credited with a powerful capacity for diffusing a dying civilization.(pp.831-833)

 

At the end of Part Two, in a section he entitles, “By Way of Conclusion: Conjuncture and Conjunctures,’ Braudel elaborates on his new methodology:

 

     In the preceding pages, the reader may have been constantly reminded of the inter-relationship between change and the near-permanent in history. If we now narrow our range to focus exclusively on the element of change of movement, the picture alters dramatically: a mathematical parallel might be the transition, by eliminating one dimension, from solid geometry to the necessary simpler field of plane geometry. In this case we are now faced with a narrative view of history, the episodic content of which – periods, crises, phases and turning-points – may tempt the historian to dramatize or to jump to convenient if sometimes fallacious explanations. For the economic conjuncture, the most obvious and familiar of those we have to deal with, very rapidly comes to tower above all the others, imposing upon them its own terminology and categories. Neo-materialism is an inviting path. How valid is it as an approach?

. . .

 

     Our problem now is to imagine and locate the correlations between the rhythms of material life and the other diverse fluctuations of human existence. For there is no single conjuncture; we must visualize a series of overlapping histories, developing simultaneously. It would be too simple, too prefect, if this complex truth could be reduced to the rhythms of one dominant pattern. How clear, in any case, is that pattern itself? It is impossible to define even the economic conjecture as a single movement given once and for all, complete with laws and consequences. François Simiand himself recognized at least two, when he spoke of the separate movements of the tides and the waves. But reality is not as simple as this relatively simple image. In the web of vibrations which makes up the economic world, the expert can without difficulty isolate tens, dozens of movements, distinguished by their length in time: the secular trend, ‘longest of the long-term movements’; medium-term trends – the fifty-year Kondratieff cycle, the double or hypercycle, the intercycle; and short-term fluctuations  – inter-decennial movements and seasonal shifts. So, in the undifferentiated flow of economic life, several languages can be distinguished by the somewhat artificial process of analysis.(pp.892-893)

. . .

 

Conjunctural analysis, even when it is pursued on several levels, cannot provide the total undisputed truth. It is however one of the necessary means of historical explanation and as such a useful formulation of the problem.

 

     We have the problem of classifying on the one hand the economic conjunctures and on the other the non-economic conjunctures. The latter can be measured and situated according to their length in time: comparable, let us say, to the secular trend are long-term demographic movements, the changing dimensions of states and empires (the geographical conjecture as it might be called), the presence or absence of social mobility in a given society, the intensity of industrial growth; parallel to the medium-term economic trend are rates of industrialization, the fluctuations of state finances and wars.  A conjunctural scaffolding helps to construct a better house of history. But further research is essential and at this stage much prudence is called for. Classification will be no simple matter and should be approached with caution. The long-term trends of civilization, their flowering in the traditional sense of the word, can still surprise and disconcert us. The Renaissance for instance, between 1480 and 1509, falls in a period of clear cyclical depression; the age of Lorenzo the Magnificent was one of economic stagnation. The Golden Age in Spain and the splendours of the sixteenth century, even in Istanbul, all blossomed after the first great reversal of the secular trend. I have offered a possible explanation – but who shall say how valid it is? My suggestion would be that any economic recession leaves a certain amount of money lying idle in the coffers of the rich: the prodigal spending of this capital, for lack of investment openings, might produce a brilliant civilization lasting year or even decades.

 

    The tentative answer may formulate the problem, but it does not resolve it – any more than the familiar observations we have all heard about the unexpected flowering of the Renaissance and Baroque and the troubled societies which give birth to them, of which they are, one might almost say, the morbid product. The Renaissance spelt the end of the city-state; with the Baroque, the great empires of the sixteenth century began to feel the cold wind at their back. Perhaps the extravagance of a civilization is a sign of its economic failure. Such problems take us well outside the narrow confines of the conjuncture, whether long or short term. But once more, it is a useful path by which to approach them.(pp.899-900)

 

Finally, in this tentative conclusion, he raises the question of “short, inter-decennial crises” which history seems to demonstrate were “both contagious and irresistible.”

 

     Detailed study of …. short-term crises, violent disruptions of economic life, of their ramifications and above all their extremely variable character, ought to provide new landmarks in the evolution of the Mediterranean economy. The study in depth of the ‘events’ of economic life would be of great value to historians. It has yet to be undertaken. A major problem at the outset is our profound ignorance of the area under Turkish domination, where, from the evidence so far available, the economic conjuncture, in the sixteenth century at least, seems to have displayed certain similarities to that in the West.(p.900)

 

 Braudel concludes this post-war study (first published in 1949, and revised in 1965) with the image : “history is the keyboard on which these individual notes are sounded.”

 

     By stating the narrowness of the limits of action, is one denying the role of the individual in history? I think not. One may have the choice between striking two or three blows: the question still arises; will one be able to strike them at all? To strike them effectively? To do so in the knowledge that only this range of choices is open to one? I would conclude with the paradox that the true man of action is he who can measure most nearly the constraints upon him, who chooses to remain within them and even to take advantage of the weight of the inevitable, exerting his own pressure in the same direction. All efforts against the prevailing tide of history – which is not always obvious – are doomed to failure.

 

     So when I think of the individual, I am always inclined to see him imprisoned within a destiny in which he himself has little hand, fixed in a landscape in which the infinite perspectives of the long term stretch into the distance both behind him and before. In historical analysis as see it, rightly or wrongly, the long run always wins in the end. Annihilating innumerable events – all those which cannot be accommodated in the main ongoing current and which are therefore ruthlessly swept to one side – it indubitably limits both the freedom of the individual and even the role of chance. I am by temperament a ‘structuralist’, little tempted by the event, or even by the short-term conjuncture which is after all merely a grouping of events in the same area. But the historian’s ‘structuralism’ has nothing to do with the approach which under the same name is at present causing some confusion in the other human sciences. It does not tend towards the mathematical  abstractions of relations expressed as functions, but instead towards the very sources of life in its most concrete, everyday, indestructible and anonymously human expression.(pp.1243-1244)

 

 

The 26 + items below represent a selection of articles and essays on current events that we hope will shed light on those structures that shape our lives and constrain our actions (to an almost predictable degree). If we are to emancipate ourselves from these limitations, we must seek to build new structures which will provide us with a way to depart from the traditions of enslavement and alienation, which we have inherited; that will serve to guide us towards new horizons which promise greater self-fulfillment and creativity through social solidarity.

 

 

 

Sincerely,

Francis Feeley

---

Professeur honoraire de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur de Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
The University of California-San Diego

http://www.ceimsa.org 

 

 

 

 

 a.

“Giants” – Who Really Rules The World?

https://therealnews.com/third_party_content/empire-files-giants-who-really-rules-the-world

with Abby Maretin and Peter Phillips

+

Deadly Distractions: Laying the Groundwork for the Next Civil War

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52901.htm

by John Whitehead

 

“Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away…”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet

 

 

And so it continues.

This impeachment fiasco is merely the latest in a never-ending series of distractions, distortions, and political theater aimed at diverting the public’s attention from the sinister advances of the American Police State.

Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, diverted or mesmerized by the cheap theater tricks.

This impeachment spectacle is Shakespearean in its scope: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Nothing is the key word here.

Despite the wall-to-wall media coverage, nothing will change.

Mark my words: the government will remain as corrupt and self-serving as ever, dominated by two political factions that pretend to be at odds with each other all the while moving in lockstep to maintain the status quo.

So President Trump’s legal team can grandstand all they want about the impeachment trial being “an affront to the Constitution” and “a dangerous perversion of the Constitution,” but that’s just smoke and mirrors.

You know what is really “an affront to the Constitution”? The U.S. government.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.

 

The republic has fallen.

The Deep State’s plot to take over America has succeeded.

The American system of representative government has been overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, corporate oligarchy bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad.

Even now, we are being pushed and prodded towards a civil war, not because the American people are so divided but because that’s how corrupt governments control a populace (i.e., divide and conquer).

 

These are dangerous times.

+

Watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail – “Burn the Witch!!!!!”

https://youtu.be/UTdDN_MRe64

(5 :32)

+

Meet The Man Behind Cambridge Analytica, Who Made Trump President

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49042.htm

 (31:15)

TRNN Documentary

+

Chris Hedges On Corporate Control Of The World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5X3NRD00FY

(1h 14min)

+

Trump's Davos speech exposed how US isolationism is reaching its final narcissistic chapter

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52896.htm

by Robert Fisk

+

IT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING:

What is Happening May Scare You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtJLSiEi54k&feature=youtu.be

(12:48)

Anonymous Official

+

Davos: ‘New arms race is coming’ — it isn’t nuclear!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu_w3g5TZ-U&feature=youtu.be

 (28:01)

with Ren Zhengfei and Yuval Noah Harari

 

 

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari spoke on a panel about the advent of artificial intelligence at the dangers of an AI "arms race" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

 

===========

 

b.

How To Be A Mentally Sovereign Human

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52890.htm

by Caitlin Johnstone

 

We all showed up naked, slimy and clueless in a world of inexplicable sensory input we couldn’t make head or tail out of. We were then taught what’s what by people who showed up under the exact same circumstances a blink of an eye earlier.

The amniotic fluid is barely washed from our tiny naked bodies before we find ourselves in a marriage and a day job, staring down at a small pair of eyes looking up to us for guidance.

This is not a good environment for developing mental sovereignty, the ownership and authorship of your own cognitive relationship with life.

Stepping into the world as a small person is like stepping completely unarmored onto a battlefield with live ammunition flying in all directions, except instead of bullets, it’s narrative.

On one side of the battlefield you’ve got your family with rifles and side-arms firing their stories about what’s important in life, what the world is like, how people should deal with problems, and what society ought to look like.

On another side you’ve got teachers and preachers armed with shotguns spraying buckshot about the beliefs that various power structures want you to have about your experience on this earth.

On another side you’ve got the advertisers, armed with machine guns, hammering anything that moves with narratives about inadequacy and problems you never knew you had.

And, raining bombs from above, you’ve got the mass media propagandists.

You’re not going to make it off of that field without sustaining significant damage. You never stood a chance, really. At best you’re going to spend a long time picking slugs, bullets and shrapnel out of your flesh and stitching up the wounds that they caused, and that’s assuming you’re one of the lucky few who makes it off the field at all. Most just absorb the beliefs that get blasted into them in the frenzy of living and keep almost all of them.

Becoming a mentally self-sovereign human being means undoing all that damage, and protecting yourself from absorbing more. It means completely renouncing everything you’ve been told to believe about what’s happening on these strange shores you washed up on small, sticky and confused, and setting off to find out for yourself instead. It means making it to the swamps of Dagobah and looking where the wise old muppet is pointing when he suggests “You must unlearn what you have learned.”

+

"The Liars that Led Us to War"

Image result for pinocchio

https://youtu.be/qjdDLztrJkc

(24:39)

+

How secret Saudi deal w/ Iran got Soleimani killed

https://youtu.be/15AwcDY0Z0M

(27:58)

+

The Angry Arab: US Violated Unspoken Rule of Engagement with Iran
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52888.htm

by As`ad AbuKhalil


As’ad AbuKhalil analyzes the Trump administration’s decision to escalate hostilities with Iran and its regional allies.
+

Trump vs. Iran: What Now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCkNKYXOJIY

(1h 11min)

with Jeremy Scahill

 

Following the Trump administration’s assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, tensions between the United States and Iran rose to the boiling point. On Monday, January 13, The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill moderated a discussion on the unfolding crisis in front of a live audience in New York, with Intercept's senior columnist Mehdi Hasan, reporter Murtaza Hussain, national security editor Vanessa Gezari, and senior news editor Ali Gharib.

 

Why did Trump kill Suleimani, and what does this mean for Iran? What do we know about Suleimani from the leaked Iranian spy cables obtained by The Intercept? Will Trump’s current posture hold, or will he order more violence? What can the rest of us — especially the left and the anti-war movement — do to stop this dangerous conflict from re-escalating?

+

Unintended Consequences: Did Trump Just Give the Middle East to China and Russia?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52863.htm

by F. William Engdahl

 

By the series of actions in recent months in Iraq and across the Middle East, Washington has forced a strategic shift towards China and to an extent Russia and away from the United States. If events continue on the present trajectory it can well be that a main reason that Washington backed the destabilization of Assad in Syria, to block a planned Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, will now happen, short of Washington initiating a full scorched earth politics in the region. This is what we can call unintended consequences.

If nature abhors a vacuum, so too does geopolitics. When President Trump months ago announced plans to pull US troops out of Syria and the Middle East generally, Russia and especially China began quietly to intensify contacts with key states in the region.

+

Chris Hedges on “The Rot Within the American System”

https://youtu.be/7A-ILh3h1Kc

(45:30)

+

Permanent War, Permanent Repo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlenwCM5gvA&feature=youtu.be

(25:55)

with Max Keiseer

 

In this episode of Keiser Report, Max and Stacy look at the latest phase of permanent war and how bitcoin, gold, and oil markets responded to the assassination of General Soleimani. They also look at the US central bank seeking ways to make their latest interventions in the repo markets a permanent fixture for bankers. In the second half, Max talks to Michael Pento of PentoPort.com about his case for gold. Though being not someone who considers himself a ‘goldbug,’ Pento believes there are many things the central banks and governments are doing that warrant a long position in the yellow metal.

 

===========

 

c.

Of aircraft, horses and zebras

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52852.htm

by The Saker

 

When you go to vet school, they teach you a simple principle: if you are under a bridge and you hear hooves, think of horses first, but don’t forget there are also zebras out there.

This is exactly what comes to my mind when I hear all the speculation about the shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner by a IRGC SAM.

Let’s begin with a few horses:

Seems to me that the most logical assumption and assume human error, especially since the Iranian have already admitted full responsibility.  Furthermore, there is no imaginable reason for the Iranian to have shot down this aircraft deliberately (did you know that most of the passengers were either Iranian nationals or of Iranian descent?).

Next, for the life of me I don’t see how Iran can be accused of trying to hide the truth when then admitted full responsibility even long before the investigation was concluded.  Not only that, but HAD they wanted to hide the truth, it would have been extremely simple, really:  they were in FULL control of a war zone.  They could have ejected all civilians and claimed that the US had bombed the location to conceal its role, or something equally insipid.  Instead, they first said “show us your evidence” and then they declared “we will show you OUR evidence which shows OUR guilt”.  Compare that with what the US does when it shoots down and airliner (either when they admit it, like the Iran Air 665, or when they cover it up, like TWA 800 or Itavia Flight 870 or, even more crucially, all the CIVILIAN Soviet airliners shot down over Afghanistan by CIA run insurgents!).

+

Iranian Flight Crash Facts Not Adding Up

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52851.htm

by Russell Bentley

 

===========

 

d.

 

Council for the National Interest

https://councilforthenationalinterest.org/

+

Trump and Congress Double Down on Demonizing Iran

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52856.htm

by Philip Giraldi

 

If one seriously seeks to understand how delusional policymakers in Washington are it is only necessary to examine the responses by the president and Congress to the assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani. The first response came in the form of a Donald Trump largely incoherent nine-minute self-applauding speech explaining what he had done and why. It was followed by a House of Representatives War Powers non-binding resolution that was all theater and did nothing to limit the president’s unilateral ability to go to war with the Islamic Republic.

It was reported that the Trump speech had been hurriedly written by aides the night before it was given and that it existed in several competing drafts. It was full of out-and-out lies and half truths and intended to reassure the American people that the president was keeping them safe. The opening line might well be regarded as some kind of joke: “As long as I am President of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” Trump has in fact done more to ensure that Iran will have a nuclear weapon than any other president through his abrupt withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) and his assassination of Soleimani, which together have convinced the Iranian leadership that there is no possibility of a reasonable negotiated solution when dealing with the American president, even when he claims he wants to “talk.”

Trump then went on characteristically to eulogize our brave soldiers on far flung battlefields before lying again, saying “For far too long — all the way back to 1979, to be exact — nations have tolerated Iran’s destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East and beyond. Those days are over. Iran has been the leading sponsor of terrorism, and their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. We will never let that happen.” Lie one is that the “destructive and destabilizing behavior” actually has Made in U.S.A. stamped all over it. Lie two is “leading sponsor of terrorism,” an honor that belongs to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States, in that order. And lie three is that Iran “pursued” nuclear weapons. It has never done so.

 

===========

 

e.

http://eu.eot.su/language/en/

+

Russian political earthquake: Putin sets out plan for Kremlin departure

& Medvedev resigns

Russian political earthquake: Putin sets out plan for Kremlin departure & Medvedev resigns

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/478381-russian-government-resignation-mishustin/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email

by Bryan MacDonald

+

‘More powers, more responsibilities’: Putin proposes granting parliament power to choose PM & form government

Russian government resigns after President Putin’s state-of-the-nation address proposes changes to the constitution

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/478381-russian-government-resignation-mishustin/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email

+

The Russian Prime Minister Resigns And No One Knows Why

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52859.htm

by Moon Of Alabama

 

===========

 

f.

Veterans Today

https://www.veteranstoday.com/

+

New Facts Change Everything, the Sickening Truth About

Why Iran “Schooled” America

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52853.htm

by Gordon Duff

+

Fake Islamic Trump Assassination Video Traced to Israel!

(warning, shocking and objectionable)

https://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ScreenHunter-827.jpg

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/01/09/outrageous-iran-publishes-trump-assassination-video-warning-shocking-and-objectionable/

+

Trump Admits: “We’re Taking The Oil!”

https://youtu.be/Ayi34PYpDCY

(7:06)

with Jimmy Dore

+

US killing of Soleimani & claims it has right to attack Iran is not ‘restoration of deterrence,’ it's return to the Wild West

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/478355-soleimani-attack-iran-trump/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email

by Finian Cunningham

+

"U.S. Intelligence 9/11 and Iraq: A Whistleblower's Story"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiVKwCiw6Ko&feature=youtu.be

(58:30)

with Coleen Rowley

 

===========

 

g.

New Eastern Outlook

https://journal-neo.org/

+

USA’s Short-Term Goal – Iran, and Long-Term One – China?

by Konstantin Asmolov

+

Battle of the Ages to stop Eurasian integration

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52870.htm

by Pepe Escobar

 

===========

 

h.

Conscious Capitalism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdkje0TVICQ&feature=youtu.be

(10:05)

with Richard Wolff

+

We Can’t Be Silent Anymore: Rev. Barber & Poor People’s Campaign Push Presidential Debate on Poverty

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/16/rev_william_barber_poor_peoples_campaign

+

Tanks & AR-15s: Moms 4 Housing Speaks Out After Militarized Eviction from Vacant Oakland House

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/16/moms_4_housing

+

« Answering Our Critics »

https://youtu.be/k_F36XKS_KU

(29:35)

with Richard Wolff

+

40% of countries will witness civil unrest in 2020, report claims

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/16/40percent-of-countries-will-witness-civil-unrest-in-2020-report-claims.html

+

Has Reaganomics Turned America Into a "Sh*thole" Country?"

https://youtu.be/CvMdbVE695M

(11:23)

with Thom Hartmann

+

Richard Wolff On Reaganomics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omNlCFYS4tA

 

===========

 

i.

Historians for Peace and Democracy

 

From: Carolyn Eisenberg via H-PAD
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Subject: [H-PAD] Iran/Iraq Crisis Message #4

 

Day of Action January 25: No War with Iran. Across the country a host of national peace and social justice groups are staging anti-war events in their area. To find an event near you or your campus, check https://www.codepink.org/01252020 

 

Congressional Update: the House of Representatives is in recess this week and, unless involved in impeachment proceedings, members will be back in their district.  This is a good time to convey a message about Iran –whether by phone, a drop-by visit to their office or participation in a town hall meeting. Urge your member of Congress to co-sponsor two important pieces of legislation  (or thank them if they have already signed on:

 

Barbara Lee’s resolution HR 2456 to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which has been used by the last three administration’s to justify military action in several countries. For co-sponsors:  https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2456/cosponsors?q=%7B%22cosponsor-state%22%3A%22New+York%22%7D

 

Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif) resolution HR 5543 No War Against Iran Act, which would bar the Pentagon from using funds for military action against Iran, unless specifically authorized by Congress. For list of co-sponsors:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5543/cosponsors?searchResultViewType=expanded&KWICView=false

 

Articles Pertaining to Iran/Iraq Crisis

Patrick Cockburn, The US and Iran’s Perpetual War is Unsustainable

https://www.unz.com/pcockburn/the-us-and-irans-perpetual-almost-war-is-unsustainable/

 

Mitchell Plitnik, The Time is Right for Renewed Diplomacy With Iran, but Hawks Are Still Clamoring For War

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/01/19/the-time-is-ripe-for-renewed-diplomacy-with-iran-but-hawks-are-still-clamoring-for-war/

 

Sam Levin, How US Sanctions Punish Iranian-Americans

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/19/iranian-americans-us-sanctions-iran

 

Paul Pillar, Trump Drives Past an Off-Ramp

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/01/08/trump-drives-past-an-off-ramp/ 

 

Stephen Zunes, Today's US-Iran Crisis is Rooted in Decision To Invade Iraq

https://truthout.org/articles/todays-us-iran-crisis-is-rooted-in-the-decision-to-invade-iraq/

 

Submitted by Prasannan Parthasrathi and Carolyn Rusti Eisenberg, legislative coordinators

 

===========

 

j.

France's Strike: Another Symptom of Neoliberalism's Legitimation Crisis

https://youtu.be/fjmeSwi1dy8

(12:29)

with Prof. Gabriel Rockhill

+

From: Pascal Boissel <infos@uspsy.fr>
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2020
Subject: Fwd: Mme Wonner, députée LREM, membre d'une commission parlementaire sur la psychiatrie, s'adresse à l'USP, qui lui répond

 

 

à lire: c'est grave et insultant ce qui se dit ici!!!

 

Bonjour,

 

J’ai appris ce jour la demande formulée au Président du groupe

parlementaire auquel j’appartiens à l’Assemblée nationale, remettant en

question les fonctions que j’occupe au sein de groupes d’études

parlementaires, au motif que mon opinion exprimée sur la psychanalyse

stigmatiserait « /des citoyens, professionnels du soin, enseignants,

chercheurs, tous acteurs engagés de la vie sociale /».

 

J’ai toujours, tout au long de ma vie et de surcroît depuis mon élection

à l’Assemblée nationale, eu le plus grand respect pour tous les

professionnels de santé qui chaque jour, sur tout le territoire, rendent

le plus beau des services : celui de soigner.

 

Psychiatre de profession, je suis fermement engagée pour la

déstigmatisation des troubles psychiques, le respect du libre choix des

patients et de leurs droits fondamentaux ; les deux missions

parlementaires que j’ai menées en 2019 ont plaidé en ce sens.

 

Comme médecin mais comme Députée avant tout, ma responsabilité est

d’assurer que le code de la santé publique et les recommandations de la

Haute Autorité de Santé – aussi perfectibles qu’elles soient –

s’appliquent de la même manière partout sur le territoire national. J’ai

acquis l’intime conviction que les inégalités territoriales de prise en

charge en santé mentale représentent, pour nos concitoyennes et

concitoyens une véritable perte de chance que sous aucun prétexte je ne

pourrais tolérer.

 

L’école de pensée psychanalytique, comme tous les courants de pensée, ne

saurait être exempte de questionnements visant à améliorer la prise en

charge des patients. Je reprends à mon compte la phrase tirée de la

pétition que j’ai signée à ce sujet : « l/e refus de nombre de

psychanalystes de poser un diagnostic, l’ignorance volontaire des

symptômes, la chosification et la maltraitance des patients et leur

famille au nom de dogmes psychosexuels freudo-lacaniens obsolètes sont

monnaie courante aujourd’hui. Le traitement de ces personnes comme des

patients de ‘seconde zone’ n’est plus tolérable en France./ »

 

Ma méthode a toujours été, et sera toujours celle du dialogue. Durant

mes deux missions parlementaires, de janvier à septembre 2019, j’ai reçu

tous les syndicats, personnels soignants, de toutes les écoles de

pensées de la santé mentale. Sous aucun prétexte je ne cèderai aux

multiples pressions venues  de toutes parts que je subis depuis la

publication de mes rapports, symptômes de la difficulté de ces champs de

la médecine à entrer dans le XXIème siècle. Les délais de prise en

charge avoisinant plusieurs mois ne sont pas acceptables et l’activité

uniquement programmée ne peut garantir une réponse aux besoins des

patients. Évaluer les pratiques des spécialistes, quel que soit le champ

de la médecine, et donc les psychiatres et autres psychanalystes est une

impérieuse nécessité pour une meilleure qualité des soins.

 

A l’occasion du processus législatif qui s’ouvrira en janvier, ma porte

sera toujours ouverte à celles et ceux qui sont prêts au dialogue, loin

des dogmatismes et luttes stériles.

 

Martine WONNER

Députée du Bas-Rhin

 

*L'USP répond à madame Wonner qui demande l'interdiction de la psychanalyse*

 

Madame la députée,

 

Je réponds à votre courrier daté du 13 décembre qui était adressé au

secrétariat de notre syndicat avec pour objet « Psychanalyse et santé

mentale : pour le respect de la santé publique et l’accès aux soins pour

tous ! ». Vous y répondiez au courrier - que vous ne citez pas - qui fut

adressé au président de votre groupe parlementaire par un groupe de onze

personnes [1https://www.uspsy.fr/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article=2518#nb1 ], dont moi-même.

 

Ce groupe s’est constitué à la suite du succès de la pétition :

http://chng.it/VsrmkfJjjX  qui a rassemblé plus de 32 000 signataires.

Nous avons écrit au président de votre groupe parlementaire : «

/(...)notre étonnement quant à l’engagement d’une députée LREM en faveur

d’un groupe de pression réclamant que soient exclus des tribunaux, des

hôpitaux et des universités la totalité des psychiatres et des

psychologues se référant à la psychanalyse./

[2 https://www.uspsy.fr/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article=2518#nb2 ] »

 

Nous avons, bien sûr, communiqué votre courrier aux autres rédacteurs de

cette lettre, aux universitaires du SIUEERPP et à nos amis du Collectif

des 39 en particulier. Une réponse collective ne va pas manquer d’être

écrite et publiée bientôt.

 

Dans la pétition que vous vous flattez d’avoir signée en tant que

députée, il est écrit https://www.justicesanspsychanalyse.com)/  : «

/Le refus de nombre de psychanalystes de poser un diagnostic,

l’ignorance volontaire des symptômes, la chosification et la

maltraitance des patients et leur famille au nom de dogmes psychosexuels

freudo-lacaniens obsolètes sont monnaie courante aujourd’hui. Le

traitement de ces personnes comme des patients de "seconde zone" n’est

plus tolérable en France./ ».

 

En tant que députée, ayant un diplôme de psychiatre, vous accusez ainsi

« nombre de psychanalystes » d’être maltraitants, vous emboîtez le pas

de Sophie Robert, cinéaste, qui mène une campagne au long cours pour

interdire la psychanalyse, dans les tribunaux, dans les universités,

dans les lieux de soin ; bref, partout. Vous l’approuvez, vous signez

son appel. Puisque vous vous prononcez pour une véritable interdiction

professionnelle, au-delà des obscurs co-signataires de la pétition de

madame Robert, il est urgent pour nous de vous dire qu’au nom de «

l’évaluation », vous êtes l’ennemie des valeurs que nous défendons,

psychanalystes ou pas.

 

Par ailleurs, pourrions-nous savoir, chère consœur, quelles expériences

de votre ancien métier de psychiatre vous ont amenée à une telle prise

de position ? Au-delà du parti pris idéologique des forcené.e.s de

l’évaluation qui agissent dans les télécommunications comme dans la

santé, il est possible que vous ayez des arguments à nous apporter.

 

Vous dites ensuite dans votre courrier que vous avez reçu « /tous les

syndicats, personnels soignants, de toutes les écoles de pensées de la

santé mentale/ ». L’USP a été en effet été reçue, avec les autres

syndicats de psychiatres, mais c’était par une commission parlementaire

à laquelle participait notamment Caroline Fiat et non par vous seule.

Nous avons été reçus par cette commission parlementaire et à la lecture

de votre travail nous avons su que nous n’avions pas été entendus.

 

A ce propos, nous avons publié deux communiqués :Retour ligne automatique

Un le 19 septembre

 [3 https://www.uspsy.fr/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article=2518#nb3 ] «

/(...)Ce rapport cite Bonnafé et salue le Printemps de la psychiatrie.

Fort bien, mais le Printemps de la psychiatrie désigne ses adversaires :

les capitalistes de l’hospitalisation privée, ceux de l’industrie

pharmaceutique, les idéologues de la fondation FondaMental, et leurs

amis, alliés, et mercenaires. C’est pour cela que nous sommes présents

dans ce mouvement aux côtés de beaucoup d’autres. Et nous ne ferons pas

de consensus avec ces adversaires : mille conférences et rapports n’y

changeraient rien.Retour ligne automatique

(...)Dans le résumé de ce rapport, nous lisons : « la psychiatrie de

secteur a pu freiner le développement d’une expertise plus spécialisée

indispensable pour certains patients ». La formule vient annuler

l’hommage classique à Bonnafé : la sectorisation aurait empêché le

développement d’une pensée acérée. Mensonge et manipulation.(...)/

»Retour ligne automatique

Le 30 septembre nous diffusions un second communiqué

[4 https://www.uspsy.fr/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article=2518#nb4 ] : «

/(…) L’USP ne peut cautionner l’imposture qui consiste à mettre en

exergue des déclarations parlementaires les « droits des patients »

alors que ceux-ci sont régulièrement bafoués par les restrictions

d’accès aux soins de proximité, les obligations de soins « à durée

indéterminée » et les « mesures exceptionnelles » qui deviennent la

règle, par facilité et surtout par manque de moyens humains et de

formations adaptées pour les soignants (Hospitalisations sur le mode du

péril imminent, mesures d’isolement, de contention etc.(...)/ »

 

Écouter et ne pas tenir compte de ce que dit l’interlocuteur ou

l’interlocutrice est une façon de faire qui est commune aux ministres du

gouvernement, imitant le président Macron que vous soutenez. De nos

rencontres, nous avons retenu que vous partagiez cette « méthode ». Vous

dites que « /votre porte reste ouverte à ceux qui sont ouverts au

dialogue/ » ; sachez que nous rencontrerons très volontiers des

parlementaires avec lesquels un échange fructueux serait possible, ainsi

que nous l’avons déjà fait dans le passé. Nous ne sollicitons donc pas

d’entrevue auprès de vous. De même, la Coordination inter urgences ne

sollicite plus d’entrevue auprès de madame Buzyn et demande à rencontrer

le Premier ministre.

 

Au-delà de toutes les critiques ci-dessus que nous avons opposées à ce

rapport parlementaire auquel vous avez contribué, nous notons qu’il n’y

a pas dans celui-ci d’attaque contre les psychanalystes telle que celle

que vous vous félicitez d’avoir contre-signée. Nous constatons ainsi

votre démarche en deux temps : dans un rapport parlementaire se référer

à Bonnafé et au pluralisme des références théoriques et pratiques, puis

quelques semaines plus tard demander l’interdiction de la psychanalyse

dans une pétition. Est-ce vraiment une manœuvre habile ?

 

Cordialement,

 

Pour l’USP,Retour ligne automatique

Pascal Boissel

 

[1] https://www.uspsy.fr/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article=2518#nh1  

https://www.uspsy.fr/Madame-Wonner-deputee-de-LREM-et.html

 

[2] https://www.uspsy.fr/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article=2518#nh2  

https://www.justicesanspsychanalyse.com

 

[3] https://www.uspsy.fr/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article=2518#nh3  

https://www.uspsy.fr/Qui-est-responsable-de-la.html

 

[4] https://www.uspsy.fr/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article=2518#nh4  

https://www.uspsy.fr/Selon-les-parlementaires-la.html

 

Union Syndicale de la Psychiatrie

http://www.uspsy.fr/

 

52 rue Gallieni, 92240 Malakoff

Tél/Fax: 01 46 57 85 85

uspsy@free.fr

 

===========

 

k.

From: GAZA PALESTINE [mailto:anahona366@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Subject: All our campaigns have been suspended because of Paypal policy in cooperation with the Zionist occupation .... We only have this account left and the campaign I hope you will support us before stopping it‏‏

 

 

These days we are under fierce attack from the Israeli occupation forces and companies like Paypal and Gogo Founding, and we are being mistreated: they are suspending all our accounts.

 

We have accounts in which the latest donations were suspended due to the unjust Paypal policy with Palestine.

 

We are at great risk in this policy, which is suspending our business and suspending all of our accounts via Paypal.

 

What we need from you is to provide some first aid, antibiotics and some analgesics before stopping our accounts through Paypal and fundraising sites.

 

I am sick for two weeks, I stopped working and I need to go back.

 

What I hope for you is not to leave us in this great ordeal and stand with us

 I am very sorry for this, thank you very much.

 

This is the only link that works for us.

 

Thanks for your understanding.

 

https://gogetfunding.com/gazanow1/

 

 

 

 

 

+

Israeli prof: Israel tests weapons on Palestinian kids, tests drugs on prisoners

https://israelpalestinenews.org/israel-weapons-drug-testing-on-palestinians/

by Kathryn Shihadah

 

An Israeli professor disclosed in a recent lecture series at Columbia University that Israeli authorities have permitted large pharmaceutical firms to experiment on Palestinian prisoners, and have been testing weapons on Palestinian children.

Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at Israel’s Hebrew University, also presented in Amsterdam in January on the same topic.

Promotional material for the events describe her lecture as illustrating through “the voices and writings of Jerusalemite children who live under Occupation” that Israel’s practices of “surveying, imprisoning, torturing, and killing can be used as a laboratory for states, arms companies, and security agencies to market their technologies as ‘combat proven.’”

Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s presentation was based on data she gathered for a research project for the university. The work, titled Arrested Childhood in Spaces of Indifference: The Criminalized Children of Occupied East Jerusalem, was published in the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law in 2018 and co-authored by Shahrazad Odeh, who is also on the Faculty of Law and Institute of Criminology at Hebrew University.

In the article, the authors demonstrate how Israel’s policy of targeting Palestinian children and childhood through the criminal justice system is fundamental to the state’s mechanism of colonial dispossession. They shed light on the critical role that the Israeli legal system plays in the state’s “racist project.”

Drug experiments on Palestinian prisoners

Shalhoub-Kevorkian revealed in her lecture at Columbia University that Israeli occupation authorities issue permits to large pharmaceutical firms, which then carry out tests on Palestinian prisoners.

+

Anna Kontula, a Finnish left-wing lawmaker, held for over 10 hours in Israel

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/17212-anna-kontula-a-finnish-left-wing-lawmaker-held-for-over-10-hours-in-israel.html

by Aleksi Teivainen

 +

The Anti-Israel Craze Hits

High School

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/opinion/antisemitism-college.html

by By Ammiel Hirsch and Joshua Davidson

+

Abby Martin Banned From Speaking at US University For Refusing to Sign Pro-Israel Pledge

Abby Martin is an outspoken critic of Israel’s apartheid government and anti-Palestinian policies. 

Abby Martin is an outspoken critic of Israel’s apartheid government and anti-Palestinian policies.  | Photo: Abby Martin

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Abby-Martin-Banned-From-Speaking-at-US-University--20200117-0007.html

&

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61106

+

Israel to seize private Palestinian land for establishing nature reserves

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/16/616349/Israel-to-seize-private-Palestinian-land-for-establishing-nature-reserves

by Mona Kandil

 

===========

 

l.

World pulling back from petrodollar: Russia, China — Saudis next?

https://youtu.be/An-S_BaczQE

(5:32)

With Rick Sanchez & Christy Ai

 +

Stalemate in Libya as multiple countries clamor for access"

https://youtu.be/TqRuXQlhJ74

(5:29)

with the Editor of Pan-African News Wire, Abayomi Azikiwe

+

Clinton attacks Sanders, won't commit to backing him as party nominee

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52886.htm

by Allan Smith

 

"Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him ... It's all just baloney," the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee says.

Four years since their rough Democratic primary battle, Hillary Clinton has not let up on her criticism of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, says of Sanders in a new documentary that "nobody likes him."

"He was in Congress for years," Clinton says in the soon-to-be-released four-part Hulu documentary "Hillary," The Hollywood Reporter said in a report. "He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it."

Asked by The Hollywood Reporter in an interview released on Tuesday if her assessment still stands, Clinton said, "Yes, it does."

+

An Economic Hit Man Confesses and Calls to Action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btF6nKHo2i0&feature=youtu.be

(18:35)

with John Perkins

+

A New Definition of Warfare

Sanctions can be more deadly than bullets
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52889.htm
by Philip Giraldi

 

Supporters of Donald Trump often make the point that he has not started any new wars. One might observe that it has not been for lack of trying, as his cruise missile attacks on Syria based on fabricated evidence and his recent assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani have been indisputably acts of war. Trump also has enhanced troop levels both in the Middle East and in Afghanistan while also increasing the frequency and lethality of armed drone attacks worldwide.

Congress has been somewhat unseriously toying around with a tightening of the war powers act of 1973 to make it more difficult for a president to carry out acts of war without any deliberation by or authorization from the legislature. But perhaps the definition of war itself should be expanded. The one area where Trump and his team of narcissistic sociopaths have been most active has been in the imposition of sanctions with lethal intent. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been explicit in his explanations that the assertion of “extreme pressure” on countries like Iran and Venezuela is intended to make the people suffer to such an extent that they rise up against their governments and bring about “regime change.” In Pompeo’s twisted reckoning that is how places that Washington disapproves of will again become “normal countries.”

The sanctions can kill. Those imposed by the United States are backed up by the U.S. Treasury which is able to block cash transfers going through the dollar denominated international banking system. Banks that do not comply with America’s imposed rules can themselves be sanctioned, meaning that U.S. sanctions are de facto globally applicable, even if foreign banks and governments do not agree with the policies that drive them. It is well documented how sanctions that have an impact on the importation of medicines have killed thousands of Iranians. In Venezuela, the effect of sanctions has been starvation as food imports have been blocked, forcing a large part of the population to flee the country just to survive.

 

===========

 

m.

 

Does Europe need the USA?

https://youtu.be/oWUiT2StwqU

(45:08)

with George Galloway, Phillip Collins, Bronwen Maddox

+

Russia, China, United States race to deploy ‘blazingly fast’ hypersonic weapons"

https://youtu.be/DUf0bfaK4V4

(4:22)

Scientific Magazine

+

Never the Pentagon

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52885.htm

by Mandy Smithberger

 

How The Military-Industrial Complex Gets Away With Murder in Contract After Contract

 

Call it a colossal victory for a Pentagon that hasn't won a war in this century, but not for the rest of us. Congress only recently passed and the president approved one of the largest Pentagon budgets ever. It will surpass spending at the peaks of both the Korean and Vietnam wars. As last year ended, as if to highlight the strangeness of all this, the Washington Post broke a story about a “confidential trove of government documents” -- interviews with key figures involved in the Afghan War by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction -- revealing the degree to which senior Pentagon leaders and military commanders understood that the war was failing. Yet, year after year, they provided “rosy pronouncements they knew to be false,” while “hiding unmistakable evidence that the war had become unwinnable.”

However, as the latest Pentagon budget shows, no matter the revelations, there will be no reckoning when it comes to this country’s endless wars or its military establishment -- not at a moment when President Donald Trump is sending yet more U.S. military personnel into the Middle East and has picked a new fight with Iran. No less troubling: how few in either party in Congress are willing to hold the president and the Pentagon accountable for runaway defense spending or the poor performance that has gone with it.

Given the way the Pentagon has sunk taxpayer dollars into those endless wars, in a more reasonable world that institution would be overdue for a comprehensive audit of all its programs and a reevaluation of its expenditures. (It has, by the way, never actually passed an audit.) According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, Washington has already spent at least $2 trillion on its war in Afghanistan alone and, as the Post made clear, the corruption, waste, and failure associated with those expenditures was (or at least should have been) mindboggling.

Of course, little of this was news to people who had read the damning reports released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction in previous years. They included evidence, for instance, that somewhere between $10 million and $43 million had been spent constructing a single gas station in the middle of nowhere, that $150 million had gone into luxury private villas for Americans who were supposed to be helping strengthen Afghanistan’s economy, and that tens of millions more were wasted on failed programs to improve Afghan industries focused on extracting more of the country’s minerals, oil, and natural gas reserves.

In the face of all this, rather than curtailing Pentagon spending, Congress continued to increase its budget, while also supporting a Department of Defense slush fund for war spending to keep the efforts going. Still, the special inspector general’s reports did manage to rankle American military commanders (unable to find successful combat strategies in Afghanistan) enough to launch what, in effect, would be a public-relations war to try to undermine that watchdog’s findings.

+

How the US war-state

'wasted' $11 trillion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxbGbROxMLA&feature=youtu.be

with Richard Wolff

(6:08)

 

Economist and founder of Democracy at Work Dr. Richard Wolff joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the bizarre economics of Washington’s military interventions abroad. He explains how the war lobby actually incentivizes endless and destructive conflict.

 

===========

 

n.

From: Patrick McCully - Rainforest Action Network [mailto:info@ran.org]
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2020
Subject: Happy New Year to everyone, except Chase.

 

https://acb0a5d73b67fccd4bbe-c2d8138f0ea10a18dd4c43ec3aa4240a.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/10042/RAN_logo_bw_nobackground.png?v=1553698582000

Dear Friends,

The death toll from the climate emergency keeps growing: 66 people in the flooding of Jakarta, Indonesia; 38 people in the flooding in Uganda; and 27 people and an estimated billion animals in the ongoing fires of Australia.

So why are banks continuing to finance fossil fuel projects that are causing these climate emergencies?

Big banks have been making billions of dollars from bankrolling fossil fuels, and now even more people and wildlife are paying for it with their lives. Chase is the world’s leading banker of fossil fuels, pumping in $64 BILLION in 2018 alone. 

This year, we’re kicking off the Countdown to Climate Action: There’s no time left to wait -- it’s time for us to act now and take our power back.

The move away from fossil fuels must be made by the financiers that are bankrolling climate destruction, and we need you with us, Francis.

So I’ve got a challenge for you in 2020: The Chase Climate Challenge.

 

It’s going to take all of us to take on the big banks, like Chase, using our people power to demand that people, Indigenous rights, and planet come before Wall Street profits. 

Chase doesn’t make the rules, we do, and today we need your help to send them a message. Let’s remind Chase how powerful we are when we come together to protect our communities and the planet we call home. They’re big, but together our voice is bigger than they could ever be. You and thousands of others within our network are the secret weapon that Chase doesn’t have.

And we’ve only just begun, Francis.

Let’s send them a message they won’t be able to ignore. Tell Chase we’re not backing down, we’re not going to let big banks choose our future. We choose our fate, and we choose to defund climate change. 

2020 is the year corporations take action on the climate crisis. There’s no alternative and no time to spare. This is our year of action, we can feel it, Francis.

For people and planet,

https://acb0a5d73b67fccd4bbe-c2d8138f0ea10a18dd4c43ec3aa4240a.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/10042/Paddy.jpg?v=1579200100000 Patrick McCully
 Climate and Energy
 Program Director
 Rainforest Action Network

 

P.S. if you want to support local efforts on the ground in Australia, please help directly.

 425 Bush St, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94108, United States 

 

supporter

 

===========

 

o.

The Federal Reserve is stuck in quantitativeeasing hell

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-federal-reserve-is-stuck-in-quantitative-easing-hell-2020-01-16

by Howard Gold

+

Rumors Circulating That Fed Will Announce Plans to Digitize the Dollar, Says Anthony Pompliano, As US and China Kick Off Historic Trade Dea

https://dailyhodl.com/2020/01/15/rumors-circulating-that-fed-will-announce-plans-to-digitize-the-dollar-says-anthony-pompliano-as-us-and-china-kick-off-historic-trade-deal/

+

Deutsche Bank Sees ‘Distressed Debt Cycle’ Starting in China

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-16/deutsche-bank-sees-distressed-debt-cycle-beginning-in-china

+

Russia's forex reserves reach pre-crisis levels, topping $555 billion

https://www.rt.com/business/478413-russia-forex-reserves-rise/

 

===========

 

p.

France faces more street protests as pension strikes continue on Thursday

https://www.thelocal.fr/20200116/new-national-protest-day-as-french-pension-strikes-set-to-continue-on-thursday

 +

The Uprising in France

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j4ioDygPBg&feature=youtu.be

with Cole Stangler

(31:54)

  +

Pensions strikes have gone on far too long, says French PM Philippe

http://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200115-pensions-strike-has-gone-far-too-long-says-french-pm-philippe-unions-macron-reform-4

  +

Why Macron Refuses to Retire in France’s Pensions Battle

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/17/why-macron-refuses-to-retire-in-frances-pensions-battle/

by Sylvain Cypel

+

French Popular Uprising: Revolution or Frozen Conflict?

Striking ballet dancers perform at the entrance to the Opera Garnier in Paris, Dec. 24, 2019. (YouTube screenshot)

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/17/french-popular-uprising-revolution-or-frozen-conflict/

 

This conflict is essentially over policies that put the avaricious demands of financial markets ahead of the needs of the people, writes Diana Johnstone. 

+

From: Les Mutins de Pangée [mailto:contact@lesmutins.org]
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2020
Subject: Une radicalisation inquiétante

Les mutins de Pangée

http://r.info.lesmutins.org/mk/mr/A6aUm5E8kQVXEZIP6ZTG71vfpEC-aN6tXOdWNbYJnW9WQKyn_zA3POobuwtPUoYWtPktfcHHfWoVFg8VTqQGV_8hYhSDPA0jnpjPL3rAFg

Salut à toutes et tous,

 

La Macronie et ses antennes sifflent "la fin de la récré", ne cachant pas leur espoir que des secteurs reprennent le boulot et préférant oublier les trois journées de grève nationale annoncées les 22, 23 et 24 janvier...


Cependant, on observe ces jours-ci une radicalisation inquiétante :

 

 

 

 

 

+

From: Basta ! [mailto:basta@bastamag.net]
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2020 3:42 PM
To: francis.feeley@u-grenoble3.fr
Subject: Occupations des écoles - Racisme environnemental - Milliardaires - BlackRock et greenwashing : voici les derniers articles de Basta !

 

http://clic.bastamag.net/q/89sBPbeY2d4MuQfy0NSD-Q~~/AACZIAA~/RgRgDYdRPVcDc3BjQgoALlECK16auukSUh1mcmFuY2lzLmZlZWxleUB1LWdyZW5vYmxlMy5mclgEAAAAAA~~

Si vous rencontrez des difficultés pour lire ce message, cliquez ici.

Newsletter - janvier 2020

Basta !

À la une

Retraites

Quand parents d’élèves et enseignants grévistes aspirent à « entretenir et généraliser la révolte »

Nolwenn Weiler

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/d65454cb47bad1e56d1e3f2370ded68e.jpg?1579868851#fixed

Face au mouvement contre la réforme des retraites, le gouvernement reste inflexible : le texte de loi sera bien présenté ce 24 janvier en conseil des ministres. Mais de nombreux citoyens sont décidés à poursuivre la lutte. A Rennes, les parents (...)

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/9bab5951613d7973762a725385e4e653.jpg?1579868851#fixed

Décrypter

Milliardaires d’Europe

Christoph Blocher, le grand mécène de la droite nationaliste suisse

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/317040b04f00b28912cf22a5613ba8b7.jpg?1579868851#fixed

23/01/2020 Anna Jikhareva

En Suisse, le milliardaire venue de la chimie a fait en quelques années du parti de droite extrême UDC la force politique la plus puissante du (...)

Violences Policières

Mort de Cédric Chouviat entre les mains de la police : « À croire qu’on a tous un problème de valve cardiaque »

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/175fce02394712cd6544ab32b6b9cde2.jpg?1579868851#fixed

22/01/2020 Ludo Simbille

La mort de Cédric Chouviat met, une nouvelle fois, en lumière la dangerosité de certains « gestes techniques » – clefs d’étranglement, plaquages (...)

Milliardaires d’Europe

Il est devenu l’homme le plus riche de Hongrie grâce à « Dieu, la chance, et Viktor Orbán »

21/01/2020 Gabriella Horn

En Hongrie, l’homme qui détient la plus grande fortune du pays, Lőrinc Mészáros, est aussi un proche du Premier ministre. Le milliardaire remporte (...)

 

Résister

Racisme environnemental

« L’abolition de l’esclavage n’a pas mis fin à l’écologie coloniale »

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/b658df247da78bbc5f06451aa33b7e44.jpg?1579868851#fixed

20/01/2020 Samy Archimède

Pendant des décennies, l’insecticide chlordécone a intoxiqué la quasi-totalité de la population antillaise. Pour Malcom Ferdinand, philosophe et (...)

Dossiers

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/7708d8faee0f343f594687995a8e8760.jpg?1579868851#fixed

Atteintes aux libertés

Surveillance, fichage, censure : la démocratie en danger ?

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/8c072f2810ac81bf6bcb99d9b212bd5b.jpg?1579868851#fixed

Ressources naturelles

Eviter le dépôt de bilan planétaire

Tous les dossiers

Débattre

Partenariat public-privé

BlackRock se paie une opération de greenwashing grâce à Paris et Berlin

24/01/2020 Amélie Canonne, Maxime Combes

Lors du forum économique de Davos, la France et l’Allemagne ont communiqué sur la création d’un fonds climat avec BlackRock. Un cadeau inespéré pour (...)

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/6aa72f8845720e8a75e69ba7be793c31.jpg?1579868851#fixed

Témoignages

Répression

« Je voyais son avant-bras écraser le larynx de mon fils. J’ai aussitôt pensé à la mort de Cédric Chouviat »

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/e040b9aef66e9cc767c6104f7a3d096d.jpg?1579868851#fixed

23/01/2020 Eric L.

A l’issue de la manifestation du 11 janvier à Amiens, Jules, 21 ans, a passé quasiment deux jours en garde à vue pour... « rébellion ». Convoqué en (...)

ça bouge !

Expertise citoyenne

Quand la France se rebelle : une cartographie des mouvements sociaux en cours

24/01/2020 Collectif

L’ampleur de la contestation impressionne. Un collectif de géographes vient de cartographier les mouvements sociaux en cours : santé, éducation, (...)

Mobilisations

Réforme des retraites : la carte des manifestations aux flambeaux prévues le 23 janvier

22/01/2020 Collectif

La mobilisation se poursuit contre le projet de réforme des retraites. Des « retraites aux flambeaux » sont prévues dans toute la France le jeudi 23 (...)

Basta ! est un média indépendant en ligne, qui publie quotidiennement des enquêtes, reportages, entretiens, sur les questions sociales, environnementales, économiques et démocratiques. Il est animé par une équipe de neuf salariés. Produire une information d’intérêt général Nous souhaitons produire et diffuser une information d’intérêt général, (...)

In English

Lire la suite

Ils nous soutiennent

L'économie du projet

Soutenir une information indépendante

Chroniques

Capitalisme

Comment ces milliardaires qui dominent l’Europe ont bâti leurs fortunes

https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/nl/788/40c47125ad68ee87a7d9eb63422d92a0.jpg?1579868851#fixed

21/01/2020 Rédaction

Au moment où les dirigeants de grandes entreprises et ceux des États se rencontrent au Forum économique mondial de Davos, Basta ! s’intéresse aux milliardaires européens : d’où viennent leurs fortunes (...)

Actualite
des mouvements
sociaux

En bref

20/01/2020 Mouvement social

Épreuves du Bac : demandes d’annulation et appels au boycott

Des syndicats enseignants et des collectifs de parents d’élèves demandent l’annulation des (...)

Observatoire des multinationales

 

http://clic.bastamag.net/q/Ft2rwBrWLJJAWrsxv8kEaw~~/AACZIAA~/RgRgDYdRPlcDc3BjQgoALlECK16auukSUh1mcmFuY2lzLmZlZWxleUB1LWdyZW5vYmxlMy5mclgEAAAAAA~~

 

===========

 

q.

"The New World Order | George Galloway, Rory Stewart, Rana Mitter, Mark Leonard, Phillip Blond"

https://youtu.be/ZmUAVXteZR8

 +

Saudi Arabia has paid $500M to cover cost of US troops in country

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/16/politics/saudi-arabia-us-troops-payment/index.html

 

===========

 

r.

Assange’s French legal advisor Juan Branco: “We’ve experienced a strong shift that we now need to nurture”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/16/bran-j16.html

by Oscar Grenfell

 

+

Assange Case: 'Lawyers of WikiLeaks Founder Becoming Increasingly Inaudible'

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/202001151078040995-assange-case-lawyers-of-wikileaks-founder-becoming-increasingly-inaudible---publicist/

+

Arbuthnot Out as Assange’s Judge, Says WikiLeaks Lawyer Jen Robinson

Image result for wikileaks

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/16/arbuthnot-out-as-assanges-judge-says-wikileaks-lawyer-jen-robinson/

+

Glenn Greenwald Is Innocent

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/1/glenn-greenwald-bolsonaro-press-freedom-lula

by Chip Gibbons

 

===========

 

s.

From: Jim O'Brien via H-PAD
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2020
Subject: [H-PAD] H-PAD Notes 1/16/20: Congressional update; links to recent articles of interest

 

Congressional Update

By Carolyn "Rusti" Eisenberg and Prasannan Parthasarathi, H-PAD Legislative Coorinators

 

House of Representatives

Helpful to call your representatives and ask them to support the Lee and Khanna Resolutions 

 

On the Senate side

To reach your Senators and Representatives, call the Capitol Switchboard 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121

 

 

Links to Recent Articles of Interest

 

"Trump's 'WMD' Scandal: Was the Charge of Imminent Soleimani Attack Just Made Up?"

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, posted January 13

The author teaches Middle East history at the University of Michigan.

 

"The Colonization of Puerto Rico and the Limits of Impeachment"

By DJ Polite, Activist History Review, posted January 7

The author is a PhD candidate at the University of South Carolina researching race, empire, and citizenship.

 

"Pompeo's Gulf of Tonkin Incident"

By Gareth Porter, The American Conservative, posted January 9

"Vietnam may seem like a lifetime ago, but its failures and lies loom."

 

"A Brief History of Iran"

By Ali M. Ansari, HistoryExtra, posted January 8

Background reading for current events. The author teaches history at St. Andrew's University and has written several books on Iranian history.

 

"Trump's Twitter Threat to Destroy Iran's Cultural Sites Is a Historic Mistake"

By David J. Wasserstein, Consortium News, posted January 7

Gives historical examples of the targeting of cultural sites. The author teaches history and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University.

 

"Freedom without Constraint: How the US Squandered Its Cold War Victory"

By Andrew Bacevich, The Guardian, posted January 7

"The US believed that the American Way of Life was humankind's ultimate destiny. But unrestrained greed has led to an era of injustice and division." The author is a professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. This essay is drawn from his just-published book The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory

 

"Historians Against ICE"

By Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Education, posted January 7

A detailed report on the American Historical Association's annual business meeting, in which a resolution calling for an end to university contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement passed 70-60 and two resolutions condemning Israeli restrictions on academic freedom were defeated 80-41 and 61-36.

 

"When White Supremacists Overthrew an Elected Government"

By Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., New York Times, posted January 7

Review essay on the new book Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 [in Wilmington, NC] and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zuccino. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. teaches African American Studies at Princeton University.

 

"This Is What the Deep State Actually Looks Like"

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, posted December 30

"The story of Jimmy Carter's administration and the shah of Iran

tells us a whole lot about American meddling overseas and overseas meddling in America. So does Ronald Reagan's role."

 

"Groupthink Resurgent"

By George Beebe, The National Interest, posted December 22

"As our debacles in Vietnam and Iraq demonstrate, expert consensus is not always a recipe for success.Perhaps it should come as no surprise that American policy toward Ukraine has also been steeped in illusions."

 

Thanks to James Swarts, Rusti Eisenberg, and an anonymous reader for suggesting articles included in the above list. Suggestions can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.

 

===========

 

t.

'Nobody in Poland cares about WWII anymore': Warsaw ignores 75th anniversary of its liberation from fascism

'Nobody in Poland cares about WWII anymore': Warsaw ignores 75th anniversary of its liberation from fascism

https://www.rt.com/news/478449-poland-fascism-russia-history/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email

 

The Polish people aren't interested in the events of the past, being fully consumed by their daily hassles, and the country's authorities are using this to their advantage, freely rewriting WWII history, academics told RT.

Warsaw was taken from the Nazis on January 17, 1945, after a large-scale offensive by the Red Army and the Polish forces. The 75th anniversary of the historic victory is marked on Friday, but the capital of Poland isn't preparing for any celebrations.

The fact that the USSR liberated Warsaw from the Nazis is "diminished" in schoolbooks and ignored by Polish media "because we live in country where Russophobia is one of the pillars," military historian Michal Glock said.

The capital's Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and his liberal Civic Platform party are "responsible for destroying monuments dedicated to Polish and Soviet soldiers and partly [responsible] for erasing the information that Warsaw was liberated by the Red Army and its allies, such as the Polish 1st and 2nd Armies, from the memory of the residents," Glock added.

Older people are aware [of] who liberated our capital city, but the younger generation lives in ignorance.

Those who are interested in history only study the Warsaw Uprising, which was a massive –though failed– attempt by the Polish resistance to reclaim the capital from its Nazi invaders, the historian pointed out.

In the version of history that is promoted by the current Polish authorities, "the liberation of Warsaw (but also the whole of Poland) was part of a second occupation. The Nazi troops were replaced by the Red Army."

Glock considers this angle "dangerous" and "very confusing," especially considering the fact that the Nazis were planning a genocide of the Polish population.

"After Jews and gypsies [were sent] to gas chambers, the Poles were supposed to go there. The Red Army saved us from genocide, not only planned by the Germans, but also by the Ukrainian nationalists."

He said that the "saddest thing" is that his fellow historians do nothing to stop the rewriting of history "in fear of being accused of favoring Russia and President Putin."

+

 

From: Diana Johnstone [mailto:diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr]
Sent:
Wednesday, January 22, 2020 2:14 PM
Subject:
Censorship: crazier and crazier

 

In reaction to Western plans to celebrate the liberation of Auschwitz without reference to the Red Army that did the liberating, Jean Bricmont reposted this joke on his FaceBook page:


Que préférez-vous?

 

Du café sans caféine?

 

Du pain sans gluten?

 

Du lait sans lactose?

 

Ou une libération d'Auschwitz sans Soviétiques?

 

As a result, FaceBook has removed this and banned him from posting anything on his page for three days.

 

GO FIGURE THIS OUT!

 

===========

 

u.

https://veteransforpeace.salsalabs.org/eblast2013/553ca604-d94b-4e84-9df3-0e43e3f54adf.png

 

January 13, 2020

- No War on Iran . . . .  Ways to take action . . . .

 

No war on iran

https://veteransforpeace.salsalabs.org/eblast2013?wvpId=109dc9fe-7fa0-412f-bdd8-a13b5fd0e061

No War on Iran

Veterans For Peace strongly condemns any and all U.S. aggression towards Iran and calls for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

War with Iran would be yet another bloody disaster in the region and initiate another endless war. It is clear, based on extensive evidence, including the release of the Afghanistan Papers just last month, that the U.S. has had no strategy or accountability in conflict zones and only perpetuates chaos, confusion and a rise in violence. (Read our entire statement)

Over the last few days, Veterans For Peace members have sprung into action, participating in demonstrations all over the country.  Check out the photo album and make sure to upload any photos you have!

===========

 

v.

News From Underground

 

From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2020
Subject: [MCM] A (partial) list of news and information sources you CAN trust

 

 

To this list I'd add “Children's Health Defense,” and “Del Bigtree's The Highwire.”

 

Please feel free to send suggestions.

MCM

 



News and Information Sources

ALICE CAMPBELL·TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2020

https://www.facebook.com/notes/alice-campbell/news-and-information-sources/10157890886816100/

 

 

This is far from a complete list, still working on it, if a person’s name is in blue that is their FB link which you can usually ‘follow’ or their Youtube page. I will also try to add twitter links. Please feel free to post any suggestions in the comments. If anyone in my list of 38 sources wants something changed or removed please pm me.

 

·         AaronMate twitter.com/aaronjmate

·         Abby Martin and Michael Prysner http://theempirefiles.tv/

·         Alfred de Zayas https://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/

·         blackagendareport.com Black Agenda Radio

·         Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement https://www.bdsmovement.net/

·         Caleb Maupin https://calebmaupin.com/

·         Cindy Sheehan https://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/ and
https://marchonpentagon.com/

·         Consortiumnews https://consortiumnews.com/

·         Cory Morningstar http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/

·         Courage to Resist https://couragetoresist.org/

·         dandelionsalad.wordpress.com

·         David Swanson World Beyond War and Talk Nation Radio

·         Eva Bartlett https://ingaza.wordpress.com/ twitter.com/EvaKBartlett

·         globalresearch.ca

·         https://winteroak.org.uk/

·         Information Clearing House http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

·         Jewish Voice for Peace https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

·         JohnPilger twitter.com/johnpilger

·         Mark Crispin Miller https://markcrispinmiller.com/

·         mintpressnews.com

·         off-guardian.org

·         Patrick Henningsen 21stcenturywire.com

·         Piers Robinson twitter.com/PiersRobinson1

·         popularresistance.org

·         rt.com

·         Sarah Abed https://sarahabed.com/

·         Scott Ritter twitter.com/RealScottRitter

·         telesurenglish.net

·         The Electronic Intifada https://electronicintifada.net/

·          The Grayzone.com

·         The Greanville Post https://www.greanvillepost.com/

·         The Saker https://thesaker.is/

·         thegrayzone.com

·         therealnews.com

·         venezuelanalysis.com

·         Veterans For Peace veteransforpeace.org

·         Wikileaks wikileaks.org

·         wsws.org

+

From: Monty Kroopkin
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Subject: Wildcat Strike Solidarity Actions January 22

 

Fellow Workers,

  

Wildcat Strike at UC Santa Cruz Spreading

http://newindicator.org/?p=1674

 

-- mk

+

Pompeo ‘applauds’ Colombia’s violent response to peaceful protests

https://colombiareports.com/pompeo-applauds-colombias-violent-response-to-peaceful-protests/

by Adriaan Alsema

 

===========

 

v.

IMF boss says global economy risks return of Great Depression

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/17/head-of-imf-says-global-economy-risks-return-of-great-depression

+

Looming cashless society: Will it benefit you?

https://youtu.be/N-5isib3dI8

 

===========

 

w.

Epstein investigation “stinks to no end”

https://youtu.be/HcEXn7L2AWs

+

"President Trump and pedophile Epstein using same lawyers?"

https://youtu.be/LnvBD1NBlWI

(9:01)

with Michael William Lebron, better known as legal analyst Lionel

 

===========

 

x.

"The Miracle of Kindness”

https://youtu.be/DVMO6co3fLo

(7:32)

with Chris Hedges

 

===========

 

y.

The War in Afghanistan Is a Fraud (and Now We Have Proof)

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/10/the-war-in-afghanistan-is-a-fraud-and-now-we-have-proof/

by Lee Camp

 

===========

 

z.

News From Underground

From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Subject: [MCM] Will victimhood trump academic excellence at Harvard? (RE-SENDING WITH THE LINK)

 

For the rise of "ethnic studies" as a balkanizing force, we can thank the Ford and

Rockefeller Foundations, among other pass-throughs for the CIA. This trend, and

identity politics in general, has been gradually shattering the polity, and splintering

"the left," since the late Sixties, benefiting not just the ever-growing academic

apparat of "diversity" professors and administrators, but—primarily—the elites

screwing all of us by keeping us divided.

 

That elite connection is entirely missing from this otherwise sharp article from the

Manhattan Institute, a neocon outfit that (of course) would not acknowledge the

imperial intention driving "ethnic studies" and the race/gender cult overall.

 

MCM

 

 

Ethnic Studies 101: Playing the Victim

https://www.city-journal.org/lorgia-garcia-pena-harvard-diversity-debatervard professor exemplifies how a fast-rising academic field injects paranoia and hatred into American culture.

Heather Mac Donald

January 16, 2020 

Education

The Social Order

On November 27, 2019, Harvard University denied tenure to an ethnic-studies professor specializing in Dominican identity. Students and faculty at Harvard and across the country sprung into protest mode. The failure to tenure Lorgia García Peña, they said, resulted from Harvard’s racism. NBC Nightly News, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and other outlets covered the controversy from the same angle.

In fact, García Peña had been catapulted into the academic firmament with a speed that most non-intersectional professors can only dream of. She has been showered with benefits. Thirty-one percent of Harvard’s tenure-track professors lost their tenure bids in the 2018‒19 academic year without alleging bias, since most of those failed contenders were white. Yet García Peña has gone through her academic career playing the victim, reflexively accusing those around her of white supremacy. In this, she is a perfect synecdoche for ethnic studies itself, which also stakes its identity on the conceit that it is in a nonstop battle for survival against the forces of racism and exclusion.

To the contrary, ethnic studies is ascendant. It is spreading rapidly throughout K‒12 schools; its ideology has already bled into the political realm. It’s worth reviewing García Peña’s career as an emblem of a fast-rising academic field whose worldview is taking over American culture.

In April 2019, García Peña published an op-ed about her travails as an ethnic-studies professor. After referencing Trayvon Martin as an example of the “violence and destruction based on bigotry and hate” that permeates all levels of our society, she urged readers to “dig deeper into the ‘seamless’ ways in which white supremacy shapes our institutions and every aspect of our lives.” (The rationale for García Peña’s scare quotes around “seamless” is unclear.) That all-encompassing white supremacy, she wrote, “is most evident in my location of work, in my subject position as a scholar of Latinx Studies. Colleges and universities, particularly the elite kind, were not created for people like me: a Dominican Latina immigrant from Trenton, NJ. Harvard’s manufactured ‘science’ denied Puerto Rican citizenship and produced rhetoric which deemed black people as inferior.”.

+

Prof. Richard Wolff : “On Journalism, Globalism, Capitalism, Brexit"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-cb06beTgs&feature=youtu.be

(24:54)