The Duran has the article Angry China warns US on North Korea: back off and talk or risk disaster.

The People’s Daily then goes on to point out that it is US intransigence – specifically the US’s failure to abide by the agreements it reached with Pyongyang in the 1990s, and its refusal to negotiate with North Korea since then – which have brought the present situation about

It is fact that the DPRK missile and nuclear programs stalled during bilateral and multilateral talks, but multiplied over the past nine years since the six-party talks came to grinding halt, during which the United States sought to pressure and sanction Pyongyang.

Isn’t it ironic that we can only hear the other side of the story from Chinese and Russian media? We used to think that the Chinese and Soviet citizens were hampered by lack of access to truthful news. Now it seems that we are the ones who are being played the fools.

At least we have the internet until the corporate media gain control over it.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has the post Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Statement on North Korea’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Test.

“The North Korean regime witnessed the regime change wars the U.S. led in Libya and Iraq and what we’re now doing in Syria, and fear they will become like Gadhafi who, after giving up his nuclear weapons program, was deposed by the United States.

This is one of the points I try to make. Kim Jong-Un is not acting like he is crazy. He sees how we behave in the rest of the world. He notices that the only countries we show any deference to are the ones with nuclear weapons. Our behavior is what makes countries want nuclear weapons.

The Washington Journal has the article President Carter Just Gave Trump Urgent Advice On His North Korean Warmongering.

“During all these visits, the North Koreans emphasized that they wanted peaceful relations with the United States and their neighbors, but were convinced that we planned a preemptive military strike against their country. They wanted a peace treaty (especially with America) to replace the ceasefire agreement that had existed since the end of the Korean War in 1953, and to end the economic sanctions that had been very damaging to them during that long interim period….”

These comments from Jimmy Carter add a lot of information that seems to have been lost to the collective memories of our political “leaders” and the corporate press. Very few regular citizens seem to be aware of this information. Many of the people who did once know of this have had the information erased from their memories by the propaganda of our corporate press.

NBC news thinks that airing the SNL parody “Weekend Update” is fake news. They just don’t want to get it. It is not that obvious comedy is fake news. Fake news is what the apparent serious corporate press tries to tell us that we know isn’t true. So their labeling SNL as fake news is itself fake news.

I wonder how far ahead Trump and Kim Jong Un think in their game of chicken?

Looking at Saddam Hussein’s experience, he got himself trapped in a snare of his own making. He needed countries around him to believe he had WMD to keep them at bay. He needed the USA to realize he didn’t have them so that we wouldn’t need to stop him with shock and awe. The world and Kim Jong Un saw how that worked out for Hussein.

If the USA decided to do something like that or worse to North Korea, Kim Jong Un might not have a chance to retaliate. The Soviet Union and the USA faced a situation like that during the cold war against each other. The ultimate deterrent turned out to be what was called a Dooms Day Machine. Such a machine would retaliate against an attacker without the need for human intervention.

In Kim Jong Un’s situation, the only real threat he could make is to tell us he has a Dooms Day Machine. This machine would automatically respond if he is ever attacked. He would have (nuclear) explosives already planted in a number of the world’s major cities. These explosives would detonate automatically if North Korea is ever attacked.

I am sure my idea is not one that has never been imagined by our military or North Korea’s military. If Trump keeps escalating in response to North Korea’s escalating, the Dooms Day Machine may be the last resort. Surely the best minds in the two countries can come up with an alternative that won’t destroy us all.

Naked Capitalism has the article Gauis Publius: There Is No “Political Center” in Modern America.

Has anything changed recently with the introduction of the Democrat’s “Better Deal” campaign? Richard Eskow convincingly argues no. It may be time to admit that the reason we have Republicans in power — in a majority of states as well as the federal government — owes less to Vladimir Putin than it does to mainstream Democrats themselves.

Americans have not much ability to “fix” Vladimir Putin. Do American have the ability to “fix” the Democratic Party, to cure it of its need to pursue money instead of voters? Perhaps, but not if the Party doesn’t want to be fixed.

This is why I get so perturbed by people who want to make Russia the focus of what we have to fix. We can stop Russia from doing everything some people believe it is doing, and our problems still won’t get fixed. Since Russia is telling us some truths about ouor country, our problems may actually get worse if we put a stop to evrything that Russia is doing.

For a long time, I have believed that Capitalism was forced to exhibit some humanitarian terndencies in order to compete against the threat of Communism (USSR and China). Now that the threat of Communism is almost non-existent, there is nothing to put a human face on Capitalism. It is not that I want Communism back, but we should face facts about the benefits of the competition of ideas when Communism existed as a threat. What are we going to do now to spur competition in ideas?

Naked Capitalism has the article Concrete Material Benefits: “Better Deal” vs. “People’s Platform”.

If you wonder what could have been proposed that is better than what the Democratic Party “leaders” proposed, then this article puts forth many ideas. I’ll cut to the chase, and go right to the conclusion.

For myself, I believe that a platform that delivers universal concrete material benefits, especially to the working class, is the way forward for a Democratic Party, or whatever party succeeds it, if Democrats go in another direction. Considerations of justice and electoral politics aside, a key form of collective brain damage inflicted over the last forty years by neoliberals of both parties is the belief that government can’t deliver benefits effectively. (Granted, neoliberals went out of their way to sabotage government’s ability to do just that, so the belief has a basis in reality.) I believe the remedy for that brain damage is, unsurprisingly, government that delivers benefits effectively (which is why #MedicareForAll is an important wedge issue, but adopting the simplest and most rugged form of single payer is also important, as opposed to some Swiss Watch-like program with lots of complications and dials and moon phases and such). A government that delivers benefits effectively is also a prerequisite for many other policies, chief among them dealing with climate change.

No more neoliberal shit for me.

WikiLeaks has an important article by Julian Assange – Google Is Not What It Seems.

If the future of the internet is to be Google, that should be of serious concern to people all over the world—in Latin America, East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the former Soviet Union, and even in Europe—for whom the internet embodies the promise of an alternative to US cultural, economic, and strategic hegemony.71

A “don’t be evil” empire is still an empire.

The details in this article provide what was for me an astounding revelation of how widespread and invasive are the tentacles of Google.

Google’s political bias had already become apparent to me, but I had had no idea of these details.

YouTube has the video Ray McGovern Explains How The DNC Hack Was Used To Cover-Up The Election Stolen From Bernie Sanders.

I will agree with most of this analysis. I am well acquainted with Ray McGovern’s history of analyzing these issues.

However, just to add a little balance, I will say that the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity‘s claim that it was not physically possible for the data to be copied over the internet does not stand up to my analysis. See my blog post Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence.

However, there are other analyses of the data that tend to corroborate what Ray McGovern is saying. See my blog post Election Hack Report FAQ: What You Need to Know.

Alternet has the article There’s a Pernicious Economic Theory Creeping into the Heart of the Democratic Party.

Much of the Democratic Party’s rhetoric has been ‘Uberized’ by a creeping free-market ideology that treats workers as lone competitors in a survival-of-the-toughest economy.

The time has come to reject this language as well as the thinking behind it. The notion that people must compete with each for low-paying jobs undermines worker solidarity and weakens our sense of national community.
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Rather than asking workers to “compete” with each other, the new leaders of the American left should ask them to collaborate – in labor negotiations, in new forms of public service, in acts of selfless devotion to one another and the nation as a whole.

This article is close to the right idea, but there is a little something in the tone that doesn’t seem quite right to me.

I think what troubles me is that it is too nationalistic. People all over the world deserve a fair share the fruits of their efforts. There is no natural law that says that people in the USA deserve a higher standard of living in perpetuity. If we realize that the world ought to be organized so that it tends to give every one a fair chance, then I think we will be closer to the way things ought to be.

When the article talks about collaboration, it feels a little closer to the tone I would like to see than when it is talking against competition. Although, “selfless devotion to one another and the nation as a whole” goes a little too far for my liking.

Naked Capitalism has the article Wolf Richter: How Banks Hurt the Real Economy – FDIC’s Hoenig to Senate.

The largest bank on his list, JPMorgan Chase, earned $26 billion over the four quarters. But it plowed $27.6 billion – or 106% of its income – into share-buybacks and dividends. If it had retained that income, it would have raised its capital by that amount, and it would have been enough to make an additional $250 billion of loans under current capital rules.

In total, the 10 largest banks combined, on an annualized basis, will plow 99% of their earnings into share-buybacks and dividends. Share-buybacks alone amount to $83 billion (not counting dividends). Under existing capital rules, if the banks were to retain this capital instead of buying their own shares with it, they could have increased commercial and consumer loans by $741 billion.

What this article fails to even mention is that the banks aren’t making more commercial and consumer loans because the economy is stagnant. There are not enough customers demanding goods and services to make it wise for corporations to expand capacity. Corporations already have more capacity than they need in order to supply existing demand. As long as we keep concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands, the economy needs less and less capacity to satisfy demand.

If there were good opportunities for banks to lend to (and make money) they would certainly find a way to do it within existing regulations (as this article makes clear). The Fed put out $29 trillion in liquidity to bail out the banks. Where is that money sitting? It is not being circulated in the real economy.