PATRICE GREANVILLE—Videos to make you think and take notice. Consider that ANY of these videos yield more useful information on the current state of the world, and our immediate reality, than reams of NYTimes pages, or hundreds of hours (or more) of programming by NPR, MSNBC, CNN, or the main networks. Also think what will happen when Jimmy Dore’s channel is cancelled by Google (YouTube), because, rest assured that as we write these lines, the knives are out for Jimmy and his brand of impious political commentary. Too dangerous for a system that now regards total narrative control as an existential necessity. 

FW ENGDAHL—On April 2 the Swedish Space Agency, announced that the program, the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), funded by Bill Gates, has “divided the scientific community” and will therefore not be carried out.SCoPEx was a scheme funded for several years by personal funds from Gates to test the feasibility of dimming the sun via manmade geoengineering.

The plan is to drop sulphate aerosolor calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere from high altitude balloons in a madcap scheme to try blocking the sun and thereby “prevent “ global warming. The Swedish agency decided to cancel the experiment because of a major opposition from not only the scientific and environmentalist community, but also indigenous Swedish Saame or Laplander people who are reindeer herdsmen and feared the particles could cause severe or unknown environmental pollution to their herds. Notably, the Saami Council warned that the Gates experiment “essentially attempts to mimic volcanic eruptions by continuously spewing the sky with sun-dimming particles.”

BRUCE LERRO—Is all propaganda covert or is some of it out in the open? Is propaganda about facts, interpretations or evaluations? Can propaganda be truthful in fact or is it all lies?  How do propagandists treat their audience? What is propaganda’s relationship to political ideology? In other worlds do liberals, conservatives, fascists and socialists all use propaganda or do some use it more than others? Are propagandists Machiavellian, cynical manipulators behind the scenes or do they really believe in their propaganda? How fast does propaganda work? Is it a gradual process or does it impact its audience suddenly, like a conversion experience? Typically, propaganda is thought to exist in “authoritarian” states. But what about bourgeois representational “democracies”.

RON RIDENOUR—Lasso gained a majority, in part, because of promises he made to improve the failed economy under Moreno’s administration by increasing foreign investments, cutting taxes for businesses while raising the minimum wage, and a vow to vaccinate nine million citizens during his first 100 days in office.

SARA FLOUNDERS—In the biggest and most dangerous aggression in European borders since 1945, the U.S., determined to expand the NATO military alliance into the Balkans and Eastern Europe, launched the 1999 war to dismember and destroy Yugoslavia, during the Bill Clinton administration. Ramsey Clark was in Yugoslavia twice during the 78 days of relentless U.S. bombing, expressing solidarity with people under attack documenting that the Pentagon consciously targeted civilians. 

Clark gave priority to visiting bombed schools, hospitals, market places, water purification plants, grain silos and pharmaceutical plants, as he did in other countries the U.S. bombed. Following the war, he drew up a public indictment of Clinton and other leaders of NATO countries and inspired a mass People’s Tribunal on U.S. war crimes in Yugoslavia, whose final hearing was in June 2000.