CORPORATE WHORES

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—CNN has published a fascinatingly manipulative and falsehood-laden article titled “25 times Trump was soft on Russia“, in which a lot of strained effort is poured into building the case that the US president is suspiciously loyal to the nation against which he has spent his administration escalating dangerous new cold war aggressions.

RAMIN MAZAHERI—The reality is that austerity continues, and I’ll explain why: Essentially, Macron didn’t want to waste his tiny amount of political capital by fighting for the small prize of austerity cuts. A much more lucrative prize – for the bosses and stockholders – is if he can successfully push through his backdoor raising of the retirement age to 64 as well as the shift to a universal, one-size-fits-all retirement system which even the mainstream media calls “radical”. And then after that, another radical reform to the unemployment system.

“What’s infuriating about manipulations by the Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest the goodwill of the people, especially young people. They target those who were not given the skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class. Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals. Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.” — Hiroyuki Hamada, artist

F WILLIAM ENGDAHL—Make no mistake. When the most influential multinational corporations, the world’s largest institutional investors including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, the UN, the World Bank, the Bank of England and other central banks of the BIS line up behind the financing of a so-called green Agenda, call it Green New Deal or what, it is time to look behind the surface of public climate activist campaigns to the actual agenda.

JIM W DEAN—The admitted IDF drone attacks on Iraq’s anti-terrorist militias using US and Kurdish bases has lit another dangerous fuse. And in Syria, the IDF hit the new Iran anti-terrorism base being built to protect the al-Bakumal border crossing. It is almost ready to be opened and provide transport security for the commerce that hopefully will be soon flowing.

The Venezuelan standoff has not blown up yet, but the US continues its stranglehold on the country, with sanctions that are severely punishing those it says it wants to help. Trump sees nothing wrong with this.