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, July 27, 2019

Articles recommended for Saturday, July 27, 2019

How Capital Heats the Planet: Introducing Fordulat Journal’s Latest Issue on “Climate Change and Capitalism”

Click here to access a review by Zsolt Kapelner of a recent leftist journal (in Hungarian) devoted to a leftist perspective on climate destabilization. (Once again, I must thank an activist for forwarding this article to me.)

Kapelner's review covers both radical perspectives: that of a bottom-up reconstruction of society and a state structure supported by the people to challenge capital's way of exploiting man and nature to the fullest (a la Cuba). The journal articles also advocate a variety of other schemes to modify capital's normal practices in a last ditch attempt toward sustainable economies.

I have over the life of this weblog (nearly 10 years) gone from pointing out the need to change the system of capitalism which is the fundamental dynamic factor which determines the way we live to urgently advocating a revolutionary necessity to overturn capitalism, and finally to a position that recognizes that it is too late to avoid extinction but we should prepare revolutionary strategies to attack capitalism to punish the class who benefits from it.

I'm no philosopher, but I recognize that humans have evolved from primitive notions of humans as being the center of reality, which gave rise to many supernatural mythologies (religions) to explain this notion, to where we are today: reassuring views emanating from the ruling capitalist class that hijacked science, which emphasized material reality of our existence, to serve their class of people--the owners of our economies. Thus, instead of science being used to serve the health and welfare of people in general, it has been used in a very manipulative way to serve only this tiny class of capitalists at the expense of the rest of humanity and preserving our natural environment. I concluded that this class of people became addicted to the power and wealth that their self-serving system delivered to them. Now we are facing the extinction of nearly all life of our planet Earth.

Because of the time scale of the destruction of our environment is so large in comparison to our human life span, we humans in general failed to discover this destruction until it was nearly at the end stages of catastrophe (about 1970). Yet we still had time to change our fate and we had warnings at the time, but capitalist agents were always urgently motivated to pursue their control of the Earth's population of humans. They downplayed such warnings by obscuring the issues, adding many distractions (wars included), outright censorship of any views of our impending doom, etc.

Now I think it is too late to save ourselves; but in the time remaining, I think that the class has brought this about--the high crime of our extinction in addition to those of many other species--must be punished. I have no doubt as the climate destabilization progresses to dramatic alterations that threaten human life, it will awaken people to the necessity of dramatically altering the way we live in a desperate attempt to save the human species from extinction. But as the environment that supports human life (and that of many other species) begins to dramatically destabilize as it is becoming obvious now, I think it will become increasingly clear to most populations that the class who are responsible for this greatest of all crimes must be punished. Those of us conscious of this end must prepare people for this remaining task. Thus, I see in these journal articles preliminary attempts to do just that.       

Friday, July 26, 2019

Articles recommended for Friday, July 26, 2019

Once Again Chomsky and Achcar Provide a Service to the US Global Dictatorship

Click here to access article by Canadian Stephen Gowans from his weblog.

Gowans accuses some of America's as well as Britains leading intellectuals as collaborating with the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire to destabilize governments that the Empire doesn't like with most recent target of Venezuela. He accuses them of using sophistry to rationalize these destabilization efforts. Chomsky and Democracy Now's Amy Goodman have already dramatically demonstrated this by their opposition to questioning the government's version of what happened on 9/11/2001 and many other crimes instigated by the Empire (see this, this, this, this, and this).

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Articles recommended for Tuesday, July 23, 2019

  • B(o)r-exit by Bernhard (Germany) from his weblog Moon of Alabama.

March of the Uyghurs

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook (independent news and analysis based in Russia).

Vltchek has a number of unnamed sources he uses to support his report on the latest "useful idiots" used by Western subversive agents to undermine the Chinese government's control of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. We must rely on Vltchek's unnamed sources for much of this; so if you consider him a reliable source (as I do), read the article to discover the details of this project to undermine China.

Agents of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire frequently use various disgruntled populations to undermine their primary challengers to their power and profits: China, Russia, and Iran. Iran suffers the most aggressive threats because the Empire views them as the most easily bullied by threats to their country, but Russia and China are too powerful to bully. Thus Chechens in Russia were used by the Empire to damage Russia, the Kurds and their aspirations for independence have been used by the Empire and Israel to undermine the Syrian government, and the Uyghurs are used to undermine China. Sometimes this done in the name of "human rights", but this is only a cynical public relations cover to promote their interests of being in control of the world to serve their insatiable appetites for more profits and power.

How Capital Heats the Planet: Introducing Fordulat Journal’s Latest Issue on “Climate Change and Capitalism”

Click here to access article by Zsolt Kapelner posted on LeftEast (based in Romania).

This article reports on the efforts of Hungarians to target capitalism as being the cause for the increasingly obvious phenomenon of global warming.
As temperatures rose close to 50°C in North India and water supplies were about to cease, and as a tremendous heat wave descended upon Europe, a sizeable crowd gathered on 18 June in the community centre/pub Gólya operated by a leftist cooperative in the middle of Budapest, Hungary. The occasion was the publication of the new issue of the social theory journal Fordulat(“Turn”) on Climate Change and Capitalism.

The journal was established in 1985 and has since been run by the College for Advanced Studies in Social Theory, a hub of Marxist and left-leaning students of social sciences that regularly publishes thematic issues on topics such as Social Reproduction or Digital Capitalism. Each issue, produced in Hungarian, collects translations, book reviews and original papers on the topic in question.

Extinction Rebellion: Not the Struggle we Need, Pt. 1

Click here to access article by a group called "Out of the Woods" posted on libcom.org, an anarchist website based in France. 

This is a critique of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) that is most active in Europe as a means of preventing the extinction of humans that is driven by the capitalist empire known informally, but accurately, as the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. There have been a number of article posted on Wrong Kind of Green (see this and this) that has revealed the top-down nature of this movement and the likely involvement of agents of the ruling capitalist class to supervise it. This post reinforces this contention by the well documented examination of actual events of people who have participated in XR activities. 

This critique is not to damage the efforts of well meaning people participating in XR activities, but to insure that the movement is not controlled by the Empire in order to preserve their system of capitalism that is destroying the habitat of nearly all living things.

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case

Click here to access article by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News

Although I skimmed this article and recommended it before, I now wish to offer a brief commentary on introduction to this piece.

Webb explains the long American history in which organized crime has operated at the highest political levels to coerce government officials into supporting their interests. Nowadays it appears that the capitalist system has devolved into a system which supports organized crime rather than the welfare of the American people. Because of the key role that the USA plays in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, the interests of organized crime affects all nations of the world. 

It is increasingly hard to differentiate organized crime from contemporary capitalism. This is because it has now fully integrated, or merged, with the capitalist system. This system seems to be a perfect host for organized crime. (For a good history of this development, I highly recommend reading a book entitled The Money and the Power by S. Denton & R. Morris.) 

Dynamic Systems, Ocean Acidification, and Tipping Points

Click here to access article by Paul Beckwith from his weblog Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist.

In this article Beckwith explains to ordinary people the complex nature of the Earth's oceans which are now, due to the vast increase of the burning of fossil fuels during this industrial era, rapidly acidifying at a rate that is unprecedented in the Earth's history dating back hundreds of millions of years ago.