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

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, April 29, 2021

  • What will we lose? by Alex Bartlett from Off-Guardian (Note: The author is living and working in the Ontario province of Canada.) 
"The United States and its NATO allies have weaponised the issue of human rights; using it to attack their geopolitical opponents particularly Russia and China. Sadly, the mainstream media in the West fails to point out the glaring hypocrisy of this weaponisation of human rights."

In Mid February, the Biden regime indicated that it was carrying out an ‘inter agency’ review with a view to closing Guantánamo Bay by the end of the president’s term of office. Sounds eerily familiar. Barack Obama within days of taking office also promised to close the infamous prison which stills holds 40 people in detention.

The overwhelming majority of media outlets in the West carrying news of Biden’s promise fail their readers. They fail to remind their readers that the journalist, who exposed the violations of human rights committed by the US at Guantánamo Bay, is locked up in a British supermax prison.

My reaction: I particularly liked this insight from "The Edge of the Narrative Matrix":
 
When people object to criticisms of the US-centralized empire, it isn’t because those criticisms are unfounded. It’s because if those criticisms are valid, it will mean everything they believe about the world is wrong. It would be a kind of death for them, and people fear death. Because perception is reality, finding out that your entire worldview is wrong is experientially the same as losing your entire world. Losing your entire world, your belief systems, your knowing, your understanding and all the stability it gives you, is like experiencing death.

That’s why we’ve got whole cognitive defense systems in place designed to keep information that is incongruous with our worldview out of our heads. We protect our worldview like we’re protecting our own identity, because, in a very real sense, we are.
 
And those "cognitive defense systems" have been put in our heads over the past 75 years by the ruling capitalist class via all their institutions in order to protect their system, which, not coincidentally, supplies them with so much wealth and power, from any "alternative" thoughts. Sadly for many, it already is too late.