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

Saturday, January 19, 2019

Recommended articles for Saturday, January 19, 2019

Monday, January 21, 2019 will be Martin Luther King Day, and I am posting this piece in advance so that readers can let its message sink in before the corporate media tell their lies by omission, as they have done on so many issues, such as the assassinations of JFK, Malcom X, MLK, and RFK, four linked assassinations that have profoundly affected our world up to the present day.
Curtin explains how leaders of the people, and others that refuse to follow the  orders of the Deep State, are dealt with by our masters in the Deep State, the directorate of the transnational ruling capitalist class.
By now it’s established the US and NATO are stepping up military pressure from Poland to Romania and Bulgaria all the way to Ukraine and east of the Black Sea, which seems, at least for the moment, relatively peaceful, just as Crimea’s return to Russia starts to be regarded, in realpolitik terms, as a fait accompli.

After a recent series of conversations with top analysts from Istanbul to Moscow, it’s possible to identify the main trends ahead.
The author contrasts major breakthroughs in scientific knowledge with increasing reports about the degradation of living conditions among the overwhelming majority of humans. Clearly the system, capitalism, that governs human exchanges of productivity to benefit a tiny minority, is in basic conflict with science, the rigorous system that humans developed to attain knowledge about the universe they live in.