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, June 13, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, June 13, 2020

Announcement: My posts will be spotty during next week when I am on vacation starting tomorrow.
I don't think we humans have much to look forward to in the years ahead. As we, as a species, degrade our environment through the activities of our ruling capitalist classes who compulsively pursue profit and power, the future looks increasingly dim as we approach the final decades of our existence. Don't misunderstand me, I think if the latter were disappeared from the Earth today, we are doomed anyway by their cumulative past activities. I think most scientists who are not compromised by their careers in commercial corporations and the government would agree with retired biogist Guy McPherson.
The news these years will be filled with rather depressing reports about very hot summers, huge unemployment, economic crises, domestic riots, and ongoing conflicts in the rest of the world (which has been usually ignored by most Americans). The US/Anglo/Zionist Empire will desperately cling to power by issuing threats of, and inflicting, violence on the rest of the world. The well-hidden Deep State actors who control this Empire will even consider catastrophic nuclear war on those countries which are capable of opposing their imperial activities. I think that the re-energized domestic enemies will, in their opposition, be too little and too late to stop them. Sorry for this prognostication.

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, June 11, 2020 (two "best posts" articles in this mega-post)

Since police exist to protect private property and repress the working class, there needs to be a revolutionary force composed of the working class that opposes capitalism and its violent guard dogs. In the current struggle, though spontaneous and scattered, there is a massive worldwide revolt against police that is forcing major concessions from the state. With this unprecedented solidarity, there is a potential to organize this force into one that directly opposes the police, other state agents, and capitalism itself.
The social-democratic Zuesse emailed me about five years ago to denigrate my website. Since then I've witnessed one exemplary article after another authored by him. He is now using his skills as a trained historian to uncover the many secrets of the military-industrial complex that is a key component of the transnational capitalist US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Hopefully, he will evolve into a hardcore anti-capitalist and socialist.
I especially like the following paragraph:
Americans are getting a small taste of the fire and fury that the U.S. military and its allies inflict on people overseas on a regular basis from Iraq and Afghanistan to Yemen and Palestine, and the intimidation felt by the people of Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and other countries that have long lived under U.S. threats to bomb, attack or invade them.
Hopefully young people in particular during their confinement to their homes and that of their parents while not having distracting entertainment have become aware of the crimes committed by our ruling class in foreign countries.
I've seen this development over the past five years. I think it is inevitable that the capitalist employed agents of the management of news and information, just as they have done to corporate media, would try to take over Wikipedia. I have used Wikipedia as documentation in the past, but I will now, more than ever, scrutinize for bias in their posts.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, June 10, 2020

  • The (Undercover) Epicenter Nurse: Watch, Weep, and Rage. John Kirby of Journeyman Pictures interviews a nurse from Florida who helped out at a New York City hospital serving mostly low-income patients. Posted by Edward Curtin on his weblog. The following was provided by Journeyman Pictures (via YouTube) on the nurse:
Erin Marie Olszewski is a Nurse-turned-investigative journalist, who has spent the last few months on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, on the inside in two radically different settings. Two hospitals. One private, the other public. One in Florida, the other in New York. 
And not just any New York public hospital, but the "epicenter of the epicenter" itself, the infamous Elmhurst in Donald Trump's Queens. As a result of these diametrically opposed experiences, she has the ultimate "perspective on the pandemic". She has been where there have been the most deaths attributed to Covid-19 and where there have been the least. 
Erin enlisted in the Army when she was 17. She deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Part of her duties involved overseeing aid disbursement and improvements to hospital facilities. While in country she received the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service, and was wounded in combat. Erin eventually retired as a sergeant, and became a civilian nurse in 2012. 
Erin is a medical freedom and informed consent advocate. She co-founded the Florida Freedom Alliance but no longer has any connection with the organization.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, June 9, 2020

My reaction: The author explains how the ruling capitalist class is running out of options to contain the resistance of poverty-stricken people that is an integral part of capitalist rule. But, at this late date is social-democracy a realistic option that Kavanagh seems to favor? Is social-democracy, capitalism with a more human face, a bias of CounterPunch (because the core administrators of this website live off of the ownership of stocks, bonds, etc.)? My answers: "no!" to the first question, and "yes!" to the second. But, the more important question is: what will the ruling class do to contain the new resistance that has appeared following the George Floyd protests? Could they be desperate enough to use the armageddon option--a nuclear war? I have no answers to these questions.
  • Tucker: Black Lives Matter is now a political party featuring Tucker Carlson of Fox News (via YouTube) giving his commentary regarding the growing movement by the new resistance to defund police departments all across the USA. He omits any need felt by the new resistance to construct new police departments that serve the people. My commentary follows:
Carlson represents a more authoritarian faction of the ruling capitalist class, and he, of course, regards this as "insane". The existing militarized police agencies have a history of serving the defense of the capitalist class to contain any opposition from ordinary people and to carry out their racist policies that served to divide and conquer the working class. This is a redline issue for the ruling class, much like the right to own guns that must not be crossed. But this is also a fundamental issue for the new resistance to get the police out of all instiutions--particulary the schools. So, it will be very interesting to see what happens to this effort to abolish the existing police organizations across America. 

    Monday, June 8, 2020

    Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, June 8, 2020

    Sunday, June 7, 2020

    Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, June 7, 2020

    Not only anti-Communism is a religion, but capitalism is as well. Unlike Vltchek, I was thoroughly indoctrinated in capitalism having been born and raised in the USA. But I was exposed to other versions of political reality in my young adult years. So I gradually became immune to the incessant propaganda that I was subject to the rest of my life. Because I had doubts in 1959 and subsequent years about what I was told to believe about Cuba and its revolution, and I sought out obscure periodicals in the library at a university that I was attending. These provided a very different version of political reality regarding their revolution. Since then, I uncovered one lie after another while being subject to an incessant, 24/7 propaganda barrage disparaging communism (a Marxist variant on the theme of socialism) and celebrating the fake version of "democracy" which I soon discovered as the bourgeous or capitalist version of democracy. I became convinced that capitalism was the root cause of so many social problems.
    However Vltchek never directly answered the question posed early in his article in a quote apparently by his friend Aleksandr Buzgalin: “How is it possible that a system so logical, progressive, and so superior to what is, up till now, governing the world, failed to permanently overthrow the nihilism and brutality of capitalism, imperialism and neo-colonialism?” Obviously he lays the blame on capitalist propaganda. But, what would you expect other than their use of propaganda together with all other weapons at their disposal in order to destroy a system that was a major threat to capitalist rule?
    I have since studied this question and have concluded that the Soviet Union was so damaged after their revolution in 1917 due to foreign invasions and trade boycotts by capitalist countries that they soon succumbed to a self-serving bureaucracy led by Joseph Stalin, and from which they never recovered. In effect, a bureaucratic ruling class was established. In addition, Lenin and his Bolsheviks knew that in order to succeed, other revolutions needed to occur in advanced capitalist countries which did not happen because they were crushed by the capitalist ruling classes.
    Now I would answer this question by stating that "a system so logical, progressive, and so superior" to capitalism is no guarantee that it will survive and thrive. Even if the USSR had anything like a real communism, history has offered proof of this. I think that a communist system might still succeed if humans had a future beyond a century with the (doubtful) assumption that humans could avert a catastrophic nuclear war. But they do not. Because capitalist activities have so polluted our skies, oceans, and trees with greenhouse gases, the human species has insured its own extinction within a few decades. 
    Karl Marx got one thing wrong--the inevitability of communism for the salvation of humans. Why should humans unlike all other species have this quality of endurance?