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, September 14, 2019

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

First Responders Urge Congress to Reopen 9/11 Investigation — Sept. 11, 2019 News Conference [updated & corrected]

The press conference was held this morning. The post is from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth via Youtube.  (Note:The actual press conference is about 56:50 minutes in length and begins at 4:30 minutes into the video. This was uploaded twice, but I only had the Youtube upload the earlier time.)

Although reporters from all major media corporations were invited, I am confident that none of this will be reported in their TV news programs or newspapers.

The Tragedy of 9/11: a ‘false flag’ operation?

Click here to access article from United World International, an independent website based in Turkey.
Since that day, however, inquiring minds have been haunted by questions about what really happened. Their questions are not a result of simple curiosity: the official version, according to data collected by independent researchers and the commission assigned to investigate the crime, hardly even corresponds to the laws of physics, and asks us to believe things that are patently absurd. Here are a few examples.

Dr. Peter Wadhams: Arctic Research & the Methane Risk

Click here to access a 27:58m video that features an astonishing interview with scientist Peter Wadams who reports, based on experience, that scientists and funders of research in general are in denial about the climate crisis.
Peter Wadhams is back on ScientistsWarning.TV with a comprehensive analysis of the reticent approach that part of the scientific community has been taking toward the potentially very dangerous methane hydrate situation in shallow Arctic sea waters, in this conversation recorded in March of 2019.

I brought to his attention a video that had been put together by Yale Climate Connections in January 2019, which took the position that there really wasn't too much to worry about in terms of a potential Arctic methane release.  Not fully trusting the video's assertions, I wanted Dr. Wadhams' take on it.  The conversation touched upon several areas where science and scientists are not as objective as they should be.

Apparently the situation with methane in the Arctic permafrost, both land based, and in this case sub-sea in the Arctic Ocean, is such an immense potential game-changer that it is provoking willful ignorance among many scientists and policy makers. 

Dr. Wadhams also notes that a proper risk analysis of methane outbreak at various levels has been missing so far, but should be conducted now as a high priority task. 
This, of course, is bad news. I think the explanation for this astonishing discovery is that humans have so long seen themselves as an exceptional species and protected by all kinds of imaginary gods that they simply can't wrap their head around (def.) the fact that their extinction is near.

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Articles I recommend on the internet today: Tuesday, September 10, 2019

My interpretation of the film that Christopher Black condemned

By Ron Horn

Recall that I posted an article by Christopher Black, a noted international human rights attorney, on yesterday's recommended reading list. He condemned the film as a whitewash of Nazi crimes. Last night I viewed the film "My Honour Was My Glory" (Black is Canadian and what he saw via Neflix in Canada is for Americans "My Honor Was Loyalty"). My reaction was quite different which I will share with you. The difference is quite revealing about numerous differences that people who have been influenced by years of Marxist literature (like myself) they have acquired though independent study and those who have been thoroughly indoctrinated in schools where they received a bourgeois (capitalist) education. The latter is what the overwhelming majority of citizens of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire receive particularly, but not exclusively, in schools of  "higher" education. The latter students are exceptionally favored by such schools (and the ruling capitalist class) and often go on to attain advanced degrees and well-paying jobs in universities, government, and corporations. 

My take (def. #43 singular noun) on the film shows it to be highly representative of the consciousness of ordinary soldiers regardless of their national affiliation, and as such it is a very interesting film. Marxists have down through many decades have revealed the class nature of societies, and have illuminated how one's thinking is strongly influenced by the kind of ruling class currently in power, with particular emphasis on capitalist ruling classes. Thus, higher education schools throughout the Empire intentionally teach ideas and concepts that will prepare them to serve the capitalist ruling class. Likewise, education in capitalist countries obsessively exclude any serious Marxist studies from their curricula other than superficial and largely biased references to them. Although I majored in courses in political sociology, my "education" at a state university did precisely this. However unlike my fellow students, I read a prodigious amount of Marxist literature and perspectives on various subjects (obviously the early Marxists were wrong some things: example--the working class inevitably rising up against the capitalist class) that was available in the school's well stocked library. (To explain my different attitude is another long story and for another time.)

The characters in the film illustrate how the German soldiers naturally want to protect their families and loved ones, but were obviously indoctrinated in ideas of obedience, loyalty to authorities and country. In the film German soldiers were dimly aware that they were being used as "pawns", but because of this thorough indoctrination they committed all sorts of crimes during combat. But once combat soldiers see their adversaries as human beings like themselves, they experience a crisis of consciousness much like we see today among returning US veterans from combat as having some sort of mental disorder diagnosed by government authorities as  post-traumatic stress disorder.

Monday, September 9, 2019

Articles I recommend for today: Monday, September 9, 2019

  • Exclusive: How the US is pushing protesters to attack China. Michele Greenstein of Rick Sanchez' program from RTAmerica (via YouTube) reports from Hong Kong on the ongoing protests and the key individuals and organizations giving the uprising its direction and examines their links to Washington and the US-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED). 

How Syria Defeated the 2012-2019 Invasion by US & Al-Qaeda

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation.

"How" to me is not the important part of this article. Rather the well documented article is important because it lays out the realities of the war on Syria as planned mainly by the US, Saudia Arabia, and Turkey. It is a must read especially for people who have any doubts about the coverup of these realities by media corporations in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Only the 9/11 false-flag project was worse (for Americans) as a propaganda coverup to deceive Americans and others in the Empire in order to prepare them for regime change operations in the Middle East. His lead paragraph begins to describe this reality:
At long last, Syria’s army and Russia’s air force are no longer being threatened with World War III by the US and its allies if they proceed to destroy the tens of thousands of Al-Qaida-led jihadists whom the US had helped to train and arm (and had been protecting in Syria ever since December 2012) in order to overthrow Syria’s non-sectarian Government and replace it by a fundamentalist-Sunni Government which the royal Sauds who own Saudi Arabia would appoint. All throughout that war, those Al-Qaeda-led ‘moderate rebels’ had been organized from the governate or province of Idlib (or Idleb). But now, most (if not all) of their leadership are dead.

Sunday, September 8, 2019

The recent series of 9/11 whistleblowers posted by James Corbett

By Ron Horn

Although I made a special effort to expose Corbett's superficial analysis of political events in my commentary on 9/4/2019 regarding his post entitled "When is the News Not the News? – #PropagandaWatch", I wish to honor him for his investigative reporting as illustrated by his recent posts of 9/11 whistleblowers: "9/11 Whistleblowers: Kevin Ryan" and "9/11 Whistleblowers: Cate Jenkins". While these posts fit with his propensity to target only official government agencies with exposure of lying to the public, but it is invaluable work that points to the incredible extent that private capitalist interests will go to create a new "realities" that serves their interests of profit and power. Although he doesn't frame his exposure as being related to "capitalist interests", but he does expose major lies.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to his efforts at exposing lies, but I often have doubts. I want to share some of these doubts with you. To examine some of my doubts about his website, I did a search on the latter regarding Julian Assange as a whistleblower and the corporation Cambridge Analytica as representing a private corporation that engaged in nefarious projects. Regarding the former I felt that if he was truly interested in exposing lies that he would cover the Empire's obsession with capturing a major whistle blower and put him locked away in a cell indefinitely. What did I find? Only brief references, mostly tweets, regarding Assange; and in one rather brief post he ridiculed Assange as not as effective as he (Corbett) was in exposing lies.

Regarding Cambridge Analytica I found that Corbett did report on this organization when it broke into news in March 2018, but the reporting suggested that their activities only resulted in the election of Donald Trump and the passing of Brexit in Britain. Hmmm. Do not these results reflect the concerns of the US ruling class?  And there was no mention of this corporation influencing the outcomes of other elections in a number of other countries. And he takes another swipe at Julian Assange with this statement (2:04m): "... I find it interesting that Julian Assange seems to have discovered that (then laughs) Mark Zuckerberg is a bad person." He goes on in a self-serving manner to lampoon Assange because, as Corbett says, Assange is only repeating via tweets what Corbett reported years ago. Hmmm.

I have over the years often wondered if James Corbett was not serving as a kind of gatekeeper for the ruling class to divert suspicious or critical-thinking people to more harmless ideas about the operations of the government--in reality those of the ruling class. Then, I often wondered how he could do the prodigious research necessary to churn out such voluminous material that, it seemed to me, only a fully staffed research department could handle. Hmmm. Following this thought, I recalled the remarks I made in the first paragraph of this post, and wondered why only now (18 years later) that he gets around to posting some relatively minor stories about 9/11 whistleblowers in these posts. Could it be that because more and more people are questioning the official stories about 9/11, he wants to expose some lies to possibly head off more serious doubts the entire 9/11 false-flag project? Hmmm.

Because I am by nature a positive person, I will put these doubts to rest and hope that some day in the future he will look under the rock of government lies to see the true reality of private capitalist ruling class interests.