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 LappĂ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, May 25, 2019

Articles recommended for Saturday, May 25, 2019

Graeme MacQueen Reveals The Anthrax Deception

Click here to access the interview conducted by James Corbett with Graeme MaxQueen, author of The Anthrax Deception

I agree with Corbett that this is an important, well-written, and well-documented book, which I read, about the anthrax attacks of members of Congress immediately following 9/11. The reports we got in corporate media played up the hysteria and then at some point the FBI shut down their investigations, fantastic stories were contrived, and media coverage was quickly dropped. 

Let me be clear, because I've seen this manipulation of the American people since the assassinations of the Jack and Bobbie Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, the very aggressive attacks on the Black Panthers, the "War of Drugs", etc, etc., I knew that this was another false-flag event like 9/11 to stampede Congress into supporting very aggressive foreign policies. 

Our rich and powerful capitalist-fascist masters have succeeded time after time to fool the American people so that now they don't hesitate to spin fantastic tales through their media: "Russiagate", reports of chemical attacks that the Syrian government carried out on their own people, the Empire's efforts to create domestic and foreign "terrorist" attacks to create chaos and fear (the "strategy of tension") domestically, to create their own terrorist army called ISIS to destabilize the Syrian government, and to enhance support for very aggressive attacks on foreign nations starting with Iraq and Afghanistan. Briefly putting aside the outrageous crimes committed by a very well hidden Deep State of major capitalists, I am curious how long my fellow Americans will accept such outrageous operations and tales. 

Friday, May 24, 2019

Recommended articles for Friday, May 24, 2019

The London Climate Protests – Raising The Alarm [another reaction to this article]

Click here to access article by David Cromwell, editor of Media Lens, and from the latter's website (Britain). 

I posted this article a few days ago after arriving from a grueling road-journey to the West Coast to visit activists. I was hurriedly sifting through articles that seemed important to me, and offered no comment to this one other than describing its contents. This morning I have another reaction, particularly to one statement made by Cromwell which I quoted in my original post:
Even if corporate interests were crazed enough to think they could promote mass public dissent on this scale in the cause of profit, they would have no way of controlling the outcome.
I counter this argument with one I have advanced for years: that our ruling class of capitalists are indeed "crazed enough", and thus perfectly able to lead such movements so that they can control the outcome to insure that such movements don't interfere with their obsession with power and profits. They are insane. Period. And ordinary people are so disoriented by our capitalist master's control of all ideological and media institutions that they will be led like sheep into benign forms of protest. I don't know, but I think it is too late anyhow; yet, I intend to continue my lifelong fight against our "crazed" executioners to the last breath (def.).

The Climate Movement: What Next?

Click here to access article by Clive L. Spash from Wrong Kind of Green.

According to this article, economist Spash was asked to provide comment on the recent Great Transition (Tellus Institute) round-table discussion focused on the climate movement which began with an invited statement from Bill McKibben. Spash in his commentary writes:
The climate movement, like all environmental NGOs, has been subject to the influence of neoliberalism and corporate capture. Neo-liberals love to attack government while totally ignoring the corporate control of the economy. In the USA the extent of government capture is just ignored (from the President down and not just the most recent President either). There is a general failure to link the social and economic to the ecological. Political analysis is lacking, social theory is absent and there are a dearth of substantive ideas as to alternative economies from the existing paradigms of economic growth and price-making markets.

Hence the climate movement promotes price incentives (taxes, carbon trading), innovation and new technologies, commodification of Nature (ecosystems as goods and services, natural capital), offsetting losses of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions, and new quantitative measures of growth as progress.
It looks like the answer to the question posed in the headline is: faking progress by our capitalist masters.  

Manual for Survival. A Chernobyl Guide to the Future - book review

Click here to access the review by Elaine Graham-Leigh of Manual for Survival. A Chernobyl Guide to the Future authored by Kate Brown posted on Counterfire.

Because of the wide disparity in the reporting of deaths and health problems caused by the 1986 disaster to a nuclear plant in Chernobyl, a city located in Ukraine on the border with Belarus, and other accidents to nuclear facilities, the book's author examines the research done by these disparate sources. She finds considerable bias among official sources in numerous countries that is causing the under-reporting of health problems and fatalities due to the fundamental fact that the material necessary for nuclear weapons are produced in these plants, and other contaminating, largely economic factors. The reviewer, Graham-Leigh, writes:
Remarkably, although it has been more than thirty years since Chernobyl, the mainstream position is still that, aside from the 54 confirmed fatalities, ‘the final death toll will never be known’. We have apparently learnt so little from Chernobyl that scientists managing the aftermath of the Fukushima accident in 2011 were still saying that ‘they had no certain knowledge of the effects of low-dose exposures to radiation in human beings’, as if such a thing had never happened before. Kate Brown’s measured and well-informed study is an attempt to provide some of that missing certainty.

US is about to sanction the world if they don't stop purchasing Russian arms

Click here to access article by Andrew Korybko from InfoRos (Russia).

This American geopolitical analyst based in Moscow examines the latest economic warfare launched by the US administration to counter the influence of the Russians and Chinese who wish to break the dominance of power in the hands of ruling class capitalists and their US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. He focuses on the purchase of weapons in this geopolitical struggle.
... military relationships aren't the same as most trading ones where the customer simply purchases a product and that's usually the end of the exchange. Rather, they usually imply long-term partnerships where the seller agrees to maintain the military wares for an agreed-upon length of time and train the end user in how to properly operate them, which lays the basis for more comprehensive and strategic relations between the two parties as a result of these trustful ties.

There are also billions of dollars to be made these deals too, to say nothing of any others that result from this exercise of "military diplomacy". In addition, countries that have established these close "deep state" relations with Russia and China are generally more aligned with those two multipolar Great Powers and not as easily manipulated by the US, which is of course concerning from an American standpoint.

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Democracy vs. the Putin-Nazis

Click here to access article by C.J. Hopkins from The Unz Review.

This excellent piece about reality deserves so much more of my attention, but I am short of time--I have other tasks to accomplish first. First, of all, this isn't the usual excellent piece of satire that he usually does. In this article he is very serious and insightful.

The post reminds me of a famous quote from Karl Rove who was so influential in the Bush, Jr. administration.
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
Because our masters have so much power--they own everything--they can create self-serving "realities". When one reads in the newspapers, see on TV, read in books, hear on the radio from NPR the same "realities", they become reality that is accepted by the people. Our capitalist masters have always done this, but they are now doing it at much greater intensity simply because they own or control every significant media. And also, they have so frequently succeeded in imposing these "realities" on us that they have the confidence that we will believe the most ridiculous "realities".
The “Democracy versus The Putin-Nazis” narrative is our new “reality,” whether we like it or not. It does not matter one iota that there is zero evidence to support this narrative, other than the claims of intelligence agencies, politicians, the corporate media, and other servants of the ruling classes. The Russians are “attacking democracy” because the ruling classes tell us they are. “Fascism is on the march again” because the ruling classes say it is. Anyone who disagrees is a “Putin-sympathizer,” a “Putin-apologist,” or “linked to Russia,” or “favored by Russia,” or an “anti-Semite,” or a “fascist apologist.”

Question the official narrative about the Gratuitously Baby Gassing Monster of Syria and you’re an Assad apologist, a Russian bot network, or a plagiarizing Red-Brown infiltrator.

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

The London Climate Protests – Raising The Alarm

Click here to access article by editor David Cromwell from Media Lens (Britain). 

Cromwell offers some powerful insights about the mass concern over climate destabilization:
After thirty years of mortifying indifference and inaction, now is not the time to promote the belief that the crucial alarm that is at last being raised by Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion has been cynically 'manufactured'. It is our job to ring the alarm and ensure that something is done. But first we must ring the alarm!

Even if corporate interests were crazed enough to think they could promote mass public dissent on this scale in the cause of profit, they would have no way of controlling the outcome.
And later:
Herman and Chomsky's 'propaganda model' was not designed for this scenario. When individual corporate media editors, journalists, advertising and political executives realise that they and their families are genuinely facing death, it is not at all certain that they will continue to support the subordination of people and planet to profit to no purpose. At this point – the point where the mortally-threatened corporate lions lie down with the mortally-threatened activist lambs - the propaganda model may start to break down. Either way, it is our job to continue pressuring corporate media and, more importantly, replacing them with honest, non-corporate alternatives pushing for real change.

The protests must continue, must escalate, and governments must be made to adopt a kind of war-footing subordinating everything – especially profit – to the survival of our own and all other species.

Recommended articles for Wednesday, May 22, 2019 -- (frequent updates)

  • The American Pathocracy by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog. (Updated at 9:30 AM, 9:40 AM, 9:45 AM, 10:40 AM, and 6:30 PM.)
Gowans provides us with an excerpt from his recently published book Israel, and teaches us some of the real history of Palestine after WWII. I highly recommend this book to reveal the efforts of the the Anglo-American capitalist ruling classes in collusion with Jewish nationalists to establish "Fort Israel", a European Jewish colony, to guard oil and gas resources in the Middle East for the benefit of newly emerging empire of Anglo-American capitalists against Arab nationalists who wanted such resources used for their benefit.
He reports on the legal and the not-so-legal maneuvers used by the Empire and omitted by corporate media, the propaganda organs of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, to capture Julian Assange. Assange functioned as a journalist who reported crimes committed by the Empire furnished him by whistleblowers and other sources. Such independent sources are dangerous to the ongoing operations of the Empire and its ruling capitalist classes to dominate the entire world.
I have been increasingly frustrated by the no longer active links to important articles that I have used in the past to reveal supporting information to various arguments that I advanced. Corbett provides some very useful information on what to do if you encounter such links.
  • Raising the Alarm – On the Capitalists Seeking to Profit from the Climate Crisis, a statement from the Wrong Kind of Green Collective posted on Wrong Kind of Green. (I advise people who are focused of the looming catastrophes of climate destabilization to follow this blog daily. They are revealing the real agendas that some prominent climate movements are serving--it's not the welfare of ordinary people.)
Over the past few weeks there has been much discussion among the online community concerning our six-act investigative series “The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg”. Some have continued to question the veracity of the information compiled by Wrong Kind of Green (WKOG).

Our series sought to illustrate how Thunberg’s image is being both propelled and exploited by various entities interested in promoting certain projects and ideas that will benefit their stock portfolios and bank accounts under the guise of “saving the planet”. 
Referring to the recent resolution passed by the British parliament declaring "a climate emergency", the author writes:
On one hand it’s a weapon in the hands of each and every campaign on climate change in the UK. It makes it all the more difficult for politicians and trade union leaders to defend their indefensible decisions to support fossil fuel companies and fossil-fuel-intensive infrastructure projects.

On the other, it’s a reflection of a huge political effort to co-opt, neutralise, patronise and smother the growing movement against politicians’ inaction on climate change. The cynicism and sophistication of these efforts should not be underestimated: they have been going on globally ever since the Rio agreement on climate change was adopted in 1991. And meanwhile, fossil fuel use has risen by about 60%.

We need to define, outside parliament, what this emergency means, and how it is going to be tackled.
  • The Disinformationists by C.J. Hopkins, master satirist, from his blog Consent Factory, Inc. (Some entertainment to keep you laughing while in a despondent mood.)

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

I'm back, and posts selected by activists while on vacation -- updated

I arrived home yesterday from a long and exhausting drive from the West Coast of the USA to the Midwest where I now live. I enjoyed visits with some very astute activists who have followed my blog for a number of years.

I recommend the following articles (updated at 9:20 AM) that I missed while on vacation and which were forwarded to me by fellow activists who share serious concerns about the catastrophes that we are currently experiencing and lie ahead under this crisis-prone capitalist system. In the future I expect to be adding commentaries to the posts that I select and want to share with you.