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

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, January 20, 2021

  • 15a) War Propaganda 2: The Cult of Militarism by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My commentary follows: 

    I detected two biases in this otherwise excellent article: the understandable bias of George Orwell and the bias of Rod Driver whose immersion in capitalist propaganda explains his bias. I'll not get into all the propaganda uses of the word "communism", but it is a word that is diametrically opposed to capitalism, and this explains why communism is always and everywhere trashed in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.

    You have to know about the history of the Soviet Union to understand how this word is used to defame communism. You have to know about the visceral hatred and actual deeds that capitalist ideologues have toward, and against, any system that opposes the private ownership and control of the economy. But you will have a hard time to access information about either subject in any location where the Empire exists--such is the power of capitalist ruling classes to censor and propagandize any subject.

    Understanding Orwell's attitude toward the Soviet Union is derived from his experience fighting for the newly elected government in Spain during the 1930s. This experience added to an understanding of the history of the Soviet Union illuminates Orwell's attitude toward what he saw as "communism", but in reality was central planning of the economy by a privileged bureaucratic class as represented by Stalinist rule. To create this understanding, read my commentary of a year ago in which I criticized Rainer Shea's article and explained why the Soviet Union withdrew forces from the Spanish Civil War. I would add the factual history that the Soviets were severely degraded by the constant invasions from many capitalist countries, mainly by the British Empire that aspired to rule the world and which had a visceral antagonism against any form of socialism, or public ownership and control of the economy.
     
  • I’m Blocked From Uploading to GooTube (and Other News) by James Corbett from his weblog The Corbett Report.  
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