An important part of @MaxBlumenthal's deep investigation into how billionaires and US intelligence-linked foundations have co-opted the environmentalist movement is his damning section on Naomi Klein, which needs to get more attention (thread below) thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/gre…
Naomi Klein has moved noticeably to the right in the past decade.
In 2017 she condescendingly demonized Venezuela's elected socialist gov't as mere "petro-populism."
Today Klein is the "Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair" at Rutgers University.
Gloria Steinem was a literal CIA agent
In her famous 2007 book "The Shock Doctrine," Naomi Klein correctly showed how the Ford Foundation was a CIA cutout
Less than a decade later Klein's film "This Changes Everything" was funded by CIA cutouts the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/gre…
Susan Rockefeller was a co-executive producer of the documentary based on Naomi Klein's book “This Changes Everything.”
Her husband is the son of oligarch David Rockefeller, a US government-linked cold warrior and close CIA ally who backed the Chile coup thegrayzone.com/2017/03/21/dav…
Most shocking of all, guess who has funded @NaomiAKlein's position, Rutgers University's "Gloria Steinem Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies":
Convicted sexual predator Harvey Weinstein, CIA cutout Ford Foundation and billionaire Sheryl Sandberg rutgers.edu/news/rutgers-f…
Naomi Klein was also previously a member of the board of directors of 350 .org, the textbook example of a co-opted environmentalist group.
350 was incubated by CIA cutout Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which is closely linked to coup architect Henry Kissinger thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/gre…
Someone also correctly documented in their book how CIA cutout the Ford Foundation helped support the fascist coup regimes in Chile and Indonesia and trained the regimes' extreme neoliberal economists
Who documented this important information? Oh right, @NaomiAKlein back in 2007
The problem with the Non-Profit Industrial Complex is many of these "NGOs" and big foundations are outsourced instruments of influence for US gov't intelligence agencies and billionaires
They might seem like they fund "progressive" causes, but it's co-option / counter-insurgency
The Non-Profit Industrial Complex is how formerly radical writers who once documented US-backed fascist coups are co-opted and defanged with six-figure sinecures at billionaire-funded outlets, to do groundbreaking coverage like "How to Jam the Trump Brand" theintercept.com/2017/04/12/how…
.@NaomiAKlein participated in an event with CIA cutout the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) in 2019.
The Rockefeller oligarchic dynasty is closely linked to US intelligence.
RBF founded a "Special Studies Project" in the 1950s, led by Kissinger, to plan the Cold War on socialism
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Crucial point by prominent Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad:
"The claim that the Israel lobby controls US policy in the Middle East amounts to absolving the US of responsibility for its imperialist policies".
The US empire has always violently opposed anti-colonial struggles.
The US gov't has been an "implacable enemy of all national liberation groups".
"Why the US would then support Palestinian national liberation absent the Israel lobby is something this argument fails to address"
Blaming the Israel lobby for the Iraq War is absurd
The invasion of Iraq follows a consistent US imperial policy since WWII of overthrowing Third World states that control their national resources, land, oil, minerals
See: Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Venezuela & Iran today
Far-right billionaire oligarch Peter Thiel, a CIA-linked FBI informant who has funded Donald Trump and his "MAGA" allies, also funded a spy company that hacked WhatsApp. forbes.com/sites/thomasbr…
Libertarianism nearly always turns into fascism, because libertarians and fascists value private property and capital above human life.
Libertarians eventually realize that, to save capitalism, democracy must be destroyed. Pinochet is the textbook example
All US presidents for decades (both Republicans & Democrats) have waged nonstop war, in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.
The US has killed MILLIONS. But I guess foreign lives don't matter.
"There is absolutely no place for political violence in oUr deMoCrAcy"
Every single US president is an imperialist sociopath with zero concern for lives outside of the US (and little for people in the US too). They are all guilty of war crimes, and have killed MILLIONS of people in recent decades.
Seeing them condemn "political violence" is surreal
In this important speech, the director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University notes:
-US-China "competition" is "ideological"
-The US wants to subordinate China
-"The socialist path led by the CPC is the unchangeable path for China" eastisread.com/p/yao-yang-on-…
This influential Chinese economist explains how the Reform and Opening Up started by Deng was pivotal to develop the productive forces, after a time of destructive ultra-leftism. But China went too far to the right by the 2000s, so it's shifting left again eastisread.com/p/yao-yang-on-…
"Excessive financialization hollows out real industries". China is countering this by using state-owned bank lending to "prioritize manufacturing and high-tech industries".
"The goal of [China's] new era is high-level socialism", better income distribution, and common prosperity
China's economy is bigger than official GDP statistics indicate, because it uses a measurement system based on manufacturing production, under-counting services.
US GDP data, meanwhile, is distorted by expensive "services" like imputed rent and legal fees asiatimes.com/2024/06/whats-…
"The affordability crisis in Western economies, the US in particular, is largely driven by inflation of necessary services – rent, healthcare, education, childcare – not by manufactured goods"
When those costs go up, US GDP goes up.
This is why "number go up" is not always good
This point is so crucial: Costs of healthcare, education, housing, and childcare have skyrocketed in the US, which makes GDP go up, but it also makes average people's standard of living worse, especially because real wages have not caught up.
This chart shows why it's nonsense to talk about "inter-imperialist rivalry" in the 21st century. Monopoly finance capital is concentrated to an unprecedented degree.
There is one imperialist system, centered in the USA. Its heart is Wall Street. Its blood is the US dollar.
Capitalists from all over the world store their wealth largely in US dollar-dominated assets. The US hosts 60.5% of the total value of global stock markets. 40+% is owned by foreign investors.
The US government is dedicated to protecting the wealth of the global capitalist class
Imperialism is a system, not a mere set of policies. The US created the global financial system, based on its currency, centered in its capital markets
The most important mission of the 21st century is to replace it with a New International Economic Order