AMERICAN BRAINWASH

Joe Biden is not likely to lift the blatantly illegal US siege of Venezuela, says Leo Flores on The Grayzone. In fact, his imperialist posture toward Caracas may signify a worsening f tensions between the two countries and their allies. In this episode, Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with Leo Flores, the Latin American Campaign Coordinator for CODEPINK, about what the election of Joe Biden will mean for US Venezuela policy. They also discuss Venezuela’s upcoming parliamentary elections and the fractured state of the country’s opposition.

KIM PETERSEN—Is China a paragon of virtue? No. And the US is no paragon of good either. Illegal claims? Do settler-colonialists have a legitimate legal claim to the landmass of the US? To the Hawaiian islands? To Puerto Rico? To Guam? Where is the evidence that US corporations were co-opted or coerced by the Chinese? One hears such claims over and over but never with evidence. Why? Because entry to the Chinese market was conditioned on access to technology, a decision that US corporations could have refused. This is not coercion. That a former CIA head speaks of dens of spies is risible.

ED CURTIN—Both are old men with long, shameful  histories. A quick inquiry will show how the rich have profited immensely from their tenures in office.  There is not one hint that they could change and have a miraculous conversion while in future office, like JFK.  Neither has the guts or the intelligence.  They are nowhere men who fear the fate that John Kennedy faced squarely when he turned against the CIA and the war machine.  They join the craven company of Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama.  They all got the message that was sent from the streets of Dallas in 1963: You don’t want to die, do you?

EDWARD CURTIN—The so called Deep-State has been given many names over the years.  I will not bore you with them, except to say that it was once called the power elite. They are the upper classes, the super wealthy who control the financial institutions, Wall Street, the intelligence agencies, the corporate media, the internet, the military, and the politicians. They are multinational.

They are the wealthy nihilists who care not one jot for the rest of the world. They operate in secret, yet also run above-ground organizations such as the World Bank (WB), the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), etc. Their bloodstream runs on war, the preparations for war, and economic exploitation of the world.

JOHN A SCHOONOVER—A conversion project of the magnitude described above is beyond the capabilities of the global capitalist economy in its current state of decay. A cut in petroleum product consumption in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the price of oil negative for a while, and it is currently selling below $40/barrel less than production costs for many producers. The first large victim of this relatively minor disturbance has been ExxonMobil, which Dow Jones no longer lists. Imagine the effect on the oil industry, in particular, and capitalist economies in general were a decision to replace petroleum with uranium to become policy. Every oil company would have to write down the value of its assets, oil in the ground and equipment, and rapidly declare bankruptcy. It would be necessary to artificially maintain oil production during the interim period until it is no longer needed.