We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, February 9, 2018

Some recommended posts for 2/9/2018

  • "What You Aren't Being Told About NPR" by Lee Camp of RT's Redacted Tonight program. Because I've seen the former liberal (this label means that they favored popular interests within a capitalist society) National Public Radio morph over the past 40 years into a right-wing propaganda radio network called "NPR" that is sponsored by right-wing people like the Koch brothers, I delight in posting this Lee Camp's satire of the radio network.

  • "Corruption is Legal in America". This YouTube video was uploaded by apparently well-meaning people at Represent.Us, a group that advocates citizens' use of referendums to by-pass legislatures and Congress to prevent big capitalists from funding candidates and their support for the interests of the rich. However, seeing that they have received favorable media exposure from The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, NBC, etc., I rather doubt their sincerity. It is likely an example of how the capitalist ruling class prefers to co-opt any studies and reforms groups in order to lead them into dead-end political activity--much like the Bernie Sanders campaign of last year in the Democratic Party. Anyway, the Princeton study is a very worthy one, and one that I referred to last year here on my website. This 5:50m YouTube video summarizes the study very well.
  • "Why is U.S. not globally condemned for its military occupation of Syria?" by Eric Zuesse from The Greanville Post. Although the author denies that Trump is the contemporary version of Hitler, Trump is a corporate fascist because he loves the military establishment and the generals, and he doesn't hesitate to use, or threaten to use, actual military violence to get his way. That is the authentic face of advanced capitalism once it decides to take off the mask of their fake version of democracy. In this post I don't think that Zuesse makes a solid argument to support the title of the post. I think he is only referring to the many nations under the US-led Empire, but not the whole world. Here in the USA very little has been broadcast or publicized in corporate media about the incident; and what little there was, was mostly lies.
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