Argentina Workers on Third General Strike Against Macri’s Austerity

teleSUR | June 25, 2018

Buenos Aires’ downtown was still Monday morning. Many have joined the general strike against Macri’s policies. | Photo: EFE

Argentine workers’ unions and social movements protest President Macri’s economic policies and reject his government’s agreement with IMF. 

Argentina’s most important workers’ unions paralyzed the country Monday in the third general strike to protest President Mauricio Macri’s economic policies and to reject an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Nicaragua: Breaking Out of ‘Soft Coup’ Psychosis

by Tortilla Con Sal

teleSUR | June 25, 2018

Riot police officers travel past a burning car during clashes with the anti-government protesters in Managua, Nicaragua May 28, 2018. | Photo: Reuters

“Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. …..It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

In his 2005 Nobel address, British playwright Harold Pinter wrote of U.S. foreign policy that the U.S. rarely invades its target countries, preferring to infect the country with “a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom.” Then, when its local allies succeed in taking power, the US president of the day goes on camera to declare “Democracy has prevailed.”

Venezuela Gov’t Elections Observers Reject New EU Sanctions

teleSUR | June 25, 2018

Venezuela’s foreign minister Jorge Arreaza. | Photo: EFE

In a statement published Monday, Venezuela’s foreign ministry condemned the EU for its ‘blatant subordination’ to the U.S.

Venezuela issued a statement Monday rejecting the European Union’s announcement of sanctions against 11 high-ranking officials in protest of President Nicolas Maduro’s reelection in the May elections, which were boycotted by some sectors of the Venezuelan opposition such as the Democratic Unity Roundtable, or MUD.

June 2018: reflections on 1988 three decades later

by Fred Magdoff

MR Online | June 25, 2018

In June of 1988 Dr. James Hansen, a scientist and director of NASA’s Institute for Space Studies, got front page attention when he testified to Congress that human induced global warming was indeed occurring:

Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming…It is already happening now.

That the U.S. was going through a heatwave during his testimony in what was going to turn out to be hottest year on record—though nowadays 1988 doesn’t even make it into the top twenty warmest years—helped to bring his testimony to national attention.

The struggle for democracy continues: German and American perspectives

by Eric A. Gordon

People’s World | June 22, 2018

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier / Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House

LOS ANGELES—Some fresh insight into the mind of the 16th president of the United States came to this city from the current president of the German Federal Republic. In a speech delivered here on Tuesday, June 19, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier recalled what may be Abraham Lincoln’s most famous words: “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The great, grand BBC: It’s “neutral”!!!

by Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents.org | June 16, 2018

The great, grand BBC was covering the Kim-Trump Singapore summit live. And, as usual it failed to forget its attitude to North Korea: A great show of news-neutrality!

The coverage (June 12, 2018) began at 4:32 as it said:

“A historic day begins.

“Welcome to the BBC’s live coverage of a historic day. The meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is upon us. It’s 06.30 local time in Singapore – they will meet in a few hours’ time. We’re going to be with you all the way.”

Anti-Communist ‘Academia’ ALL LIES – Interview with Prof Grover Furr (Video)

The Greanville Post | June 21, 2018

While the Western media and bourgeois academia have no problem rehabilitating the image of international war criminals like George W Bush and his camarilla, or even Hitler, the venom against hardcore communist leaders, or those who oppose the US capitalist empire, remains fierce and unyielding.

The technique of dressing up anti-communist propaganda as ‘objective truth’ is the stock in trade of all academic departments and professors of ‘Soviet Studies.’

Prof. Furr

From George Orwell to Robert Conquest to Solzenytsin, very few people have bothered to check the sources on which they base their sweeping anti-communist ‘conclusions’.

Professor Grover Furr, a talented linguist and Historian, with an interest in the USSR, Stalin and the communist movement, has done just that, and it is his evaluation of ALL the sources and ALL the footnotes that allows him to reach an authoritative opinion on the true value of these ‘bibles of anti-communism. It turns out that the overwhelmingly reactionary Polish and Ukrainian sources are ALL biased, or outright fabrications.

Professor Furr has evaluated the most prominent sources of the bourgeois anti-communist myths: “The Great Terror” by R. Conquest and “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snider. What’s more he has dissected the most prominent “socialist” sources of anti-communist and anti-Stalin myths – those put forward by Khrushchev in his “secret speech” (secret as far as the citizens of the USSR were concerned, but broadcast widely to the imperialists as a symbol of surrender; and to the international communist movement, demoralising and disorganising it most profoundly to this day), that marked the beginning of the revisionist counter-revolution in the USSR, and the ultimate dissolution of Soviet Socialism into ‘market Socialism’ and then outright counter-revolutionary gangster capitalism.

He has also broken down the anti-communist, anti-Soviet and anti-Stalin lies of Trotsky and the Trotskyites.

n this short interview, Prof Furr talks about the evidence, his research method, and how he came to focus on these most profound areas of human history, which still offer rich sources of revolutionary experience and inspiration to the proletariat and toiling masses, struggling as we are under the yoke of oppressive finance capital and its web of world domination and political and military suppression. In the words of Stalin: “I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.” Prof Furr has made a valuable contribution. We must pick up the political tasks, learn the lessons of the Bolshevik revolutionary movement and experience and build a revolutionary party capable of destroying exploitation of man by man and nation by nation; wiping away the historical crimes of this decadent era and building a bright and optimistic future for humanity. We will follow this interview with his presentation: “Khrushchev lied” and a Q&A session that followed.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

SOURCE: https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/06/21/anti-communist-academia-all-lies-interview-with-prof-grover-furr-video/

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How the New York Times Lies About Lies: Obama v. Trump as Example

by Eric Zuesse

The Greanville Post | June 20, 2018

Obama inaugurated. The triumph of phony symbolism over substance, and the apotheosis of identity politics..

lthough the New York Times says that President Donald Trump lies vastly more than did President Barack Obama, the definite liar in that comparison — based on the factual record, to be presented here — is the New York Times itself. It lies in alleging this, which isn’t to say that either President lies more frequently than the other, but instead, that the Times’s calculation fails to count, at all, but instead altogether ignores, some of President Obama’s very worst lies — ones that were real whoppers. These were lies that were essential to his maintaining support among Democrats (such as the owners of this corporation, the NYT, are), and that would keep Democrats’ support only if they failed to judge him by his actual decisions and actions (such as the NYT’s owners do — or else they secretly know the truth on this, but prevent this truth from being published by their employees). Even to the present day, Obama is evaluated by Democrats on the basis of his lies instead of on the basis of his actions. He’s admired for his stated intentions and promises, which were often the opposite of what his consistent actual decisions and actions turned out to be on those very same matters, on which he had, in retrospect, quite clearly lied (though that was covered-up at the time — and still is).

Exposure to mainstream media: the daily insult

The Greanville Post | June 19, 2018

Every single day, from cradle to grave, the American population is subjected to a nonstop barrage of lies, omissions of truths and outrageous distortions, with the sole purpose of maintaining the nation’s allegiance to the imperialist/capitalist status quo anchored in constant war and unstoppable inequality. The American system of disinformation, evolved over more than a century, fools just about everyone with its apparent diversity of sources. After all the US has literally thousands of “news” outlets, from radio stations to tv stations, newspapers and other channels, and people reckon that this enormous quantity of media must automatically guarantee a vigorous debate of the issues at hand and the presentation of all viewpoints. They could not be more wrong. This diversity is an illusion.

Social Media Giants Choking Independent News Site Traffic to a Trickle

by Whitney Webb

The Greanville Post | June 21, 2018

(The Hacker News*)

MINNEAPOLIS – For much of the year, independent media has felt the sting of increased social media censorship, as the “revolving door” between U.S. intelligence agencies and social-media companies has manifested in a crackdown on news that challenges official government narratives. With many notable independent news websites having shut down since then as a result, those that remain afloat are being censored like never before, with social media traffic from Facebook and Twitter completely cut off in some cases. Among such websites, social media censorship by the most popular social networks is now widely regarded to be the worst it has ever been – a chilling reality for any who seek fact-based perspectives on major world events that differ from those to be found on well-known corporate-media outlets that consistently toe the government line.