The Digger

March 9th, 2019 For a while, all the guns have fallen silent. I am near Idlib, the last stronghold of the terrorists in Syria. The area where the deadliest anti-government fighters, most of them injected into Syria from Turkey, with Saudi, Qatari and Western ‘help’, are literally holed up, ready for the final showdown. Just yesterday, mortars were falling on villages near the invisible frontline, separating government troops and the terrorist forces of Al Nusra Front. The day before yesterday, two explosions rocked the earth, only a couple of meters from where we are now standing. They call it a ceasefire. But it’s not. It is one-sided. To be more precise: the Syrian army is waiting, patiently. Its cannons are pointing towards the positions of the enemy, but the orders from Damascus are clear: do not fire. The enemy has no scruples. It provokes, endlessly. It fires and bombs, indiscriminately. It kills. Along the frontline, thousands of houses are already ruined. No...

Check this one out at   https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/power-failure-blackout-update-situation-venezuela.html

I'd never read Helen Buyniski before this morning. I found this on Veterans Today but Buyniski has her own site, so I'll link to that one too -  Helen of DesTroy: "The Sorcerer's Apprentice Effect" - so you can check out her other writing if you like and tell us what you think. This is a long article but the writing is trenchant and covers a lot of ground: the unbelievably transparently bogus coup attempt in Venezuela, Macron's anti-Semitism smear against the Yellow Vests, Congress's freak-out over Ilhan Omar tweeting the obvious, all manner of social media censorship, NewsGuard - in short, all the ways the propagandists are attempting to regain some control over the narrative. Here are the first paragraphs: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The myth of American exceptionalism has been busted. An era of global hegemony, fueled by rapacious growth and backed by military muscle, built the world’s largest echo chamber, reassuring Americans of their grea...

The only way we'll defeat the foreign policy establishment is if the Left and Right can be brought together. By  ANDREW J. BACEVICH  •  March 8, 2019 Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) speaks at The American Conservative’s 5th Annual Foreign Policy Conference on Nov. 15, 2018.  Danny Delgado/Delgado Photos     This past week, I participated in a forum convened in Washington by Democrats of a decidedly progressive persuasion. The purpose of the gathering was to explore alternatives to the existing over-militarized pattern of U.S. foreign policy. Although a conservative, I have over the years come to admire more than a few progressives, even without necessarily sharing their views, especially on cultural matters. More to the point, I have long believed that the forging of a progressive-conservative coalition on America’s proper role in the world is a prerequisite for wresting control of U.S. policy from the existing and utterly hidebound national s...

"Noted scholar Nancy Fraser joined us for a wide-ranging interview covering Marx’ and Engels’ view of social reproduction, the tension between class, gender, and race, and the need for a “Feminism for the 99%”. Nancy Fraser was interviewed by Albert Scharenberg of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, New York." https://youtu.be/w0448ptJ4Ic?list=PLhiXBRrj94PcOtAp_hEuH5ID98l1n7wFj

"THERE IS a still-widespread fallacy that Marxism cares only about economics. It is certainly true that Marxists believe the economic relations of society constitute its foundation, and you can't understand the dynamics of a particular society unless you understand its underlying relations of production--and, in particular, its  class  relations. "What distinguishes the various economic formations of society," wrote Marx in  Capital , "is the form in which...surplus labor is in each case extorted from the immediate producer, the worker." But just as a house is more than its foundation and supports, so capitalism is more than its economic structure. As Marx famously wrote in his Preface to  A Critique of Political Economy , a "legal and political superstructure" arises on this foundation, "to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness." One key component of this superstructure is the state, which has, at its core, agen...

I'm just gonna give you the link to this because the vids don't show up if I try pasting it in. Some don't show up on C Johnstone's site either because NBC removed them. Russiagate Wizard Deceives Audience About Assange

March 7, 2019 It has been established for some time that individuals with strong political beliefs tend to display greater confidence in them than individuals who have less strong beliefs. Despite both types of individuals holding specific, concretised views, there is a clear positive correlation between belief strength and belief confidence. Yet, until recently it was unclear whether this dynamic is due to an overconfidence bias or a failure of metacognition; meaning, does the correlation exist because individuals adopt a self-portrayal of unwavering confidence (a notion closely related to ‘virtue-signalling’), or does it exist because individuals, for whatever reason, lack an insight into the veracity of their beliefs and refuse to engage in a process of verification. A recent study published in Current Biology     by Max Rollwage, Raymond J. Doland and Stephen M. Fleming at University College London explored this issue. They demonstrated via a low-level pe...

A few weeks ago Moon of Alabama reported that Russiagate Is Finished : Nothing, zero, nada was found to support the conspiracy theory. The Trump campaign did not collude with Russia. A few flunkies were indicted for unrelated tax issues and for lying to the investigators about some minor details. But nothing at all supports the dramatic claims of collusion made since the beginning of the affair. ... In a just world the people who for more then two years hyped the conspiracy theory and caused so much damage would be pushed out of their public positions. Unfortunately that is not going to happen. They will jump onto the next conspiracy train and continue from there. It seems that this was too much to expect from those who believed in Russiagate. These people are unable to think up a new conspiracy theory by themselves. Instead they go for a fishing expedition to find something that they can use to continue the fake outrage: The House Judiciary Committee sent more than 80 ...