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, April 14, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, April 14, 2021 (This is all the recommended news articles that I could stomach.)

  • Life Insurance Unchanged By COVID? featuring Ben Swann and Bob Burnett, a knowledgeable person regarding statistics of the insurance industry. Burnett has observed no changes in life insurance rates and other death stats in this 10:43m video from ISE.
  • 💥Big Corporations Now Deploying Woke Ideology the Way Intelligence Agencies Do: As a Disguise by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog at Substack. This is a best post. (Note: You need to substitute the Empire's capitalist ruling class in place of "big corporations" or "corporate class" to make the most sense out of this article.) My reaction: The Empire's transnational capitalist ruling classes are now appearing to know no limits in their deceitful practices to maintain their power along with profits. The Empire's secret services are wrapping themselves in social justice causes like BLM and LGBT. Greenwald starts with the practices of the British secret services, but soon describes such practice among the US's:
The CIA — in between military coups, domestic disinformation campaigns, planting false stories with their journalist-partners, and drone-assassinating U.S. citizens without due process — joyously celebrates Women’s Day, promotes what it calls The Agency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Officers (ANGLE), hosts activities for Pride Month, and organizes events to commemorate Black History Month. The FBI does the same.
 
Even old-fashioned conservatives (The American Conservative) are being turned-off by these practices, and he quotes some of their criticisms. Most of Greenwald's exposé drips with cynicism at this display of current deceptive practices, but later he gets seriously straight by concluding with this statement:
 
The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the corporate class and the ways they abuse and eliminate labor, control government, and destroy the working and middle classes will be impossible to see, as we are all blinded by the glare of their virtuous Instagram posts about racial justice and their unified campaigns against voter suppression. In an instant of swooning over their benevolent devotion to social justice, we will forget what they actually exist to do. When we work to harness their power to support our own political causes, we forget about how out of control and menacing that power is, and what it is most often used for. And that is exactly the way they want it. 
  • Countdown to Destruction by Andrew Anglin from The Unz Review. (Note: This article, as well as recent others, is very disturbing. My reaction: Yes, as Biden proclaimed, "America is back", and is engaged in provocative actions everywhere! If we make it through the next few months, it will be a miracle.)
  • The Vicious Circle: Policing and the Culture of White Male Violence by Nicholas De Genova from Spectre. My reaction: This is from a supposedly "Marxist" journal, but the author of this piece avoids the argument that the "Culture of White Male Violence" is actually capitalist culture. His reasoning doesn't remove gender from his argument. Apparently most of the article was written before the killing of Daunte Wright by Kim Potter, a female police officer. But in effect De Genov supports the gender bias of the ruling class--it's all about gender, not capitalism, the sacred cow of the capitalist ruling classes!
 
 
  • Shock Therapy: How Austerity and Privatisation Destroy Nations by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My reaction: I got a chuckle out of his statement that "When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, US advisors tried to persuade the Russian government that Russia could quickly change from its existing Communist system to an extreme version of capitalism." "Extreme version of capitalism" is now the new normal in the USA and much of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire and beyond.