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, June 3, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, June 3, 2021

The fact that there can be that drastic of a shift from something no pundit or politician may say to something they’re encouraged to talk about all the time—all at once, at the drop of a hat—says so much about what the political/media class is and how it works in our society. How utterly uninterested in truth and facts it is. How arbitrary its dictates are. How completely made-up its ongoing story of the world is. It just says what’s convenient for the powerful, and when that’s not convenient anymore it switches to something else. 
Engdahl argues that the "infrastructure bill" is mostly propaganda to fool the American public (once again), but will actually promote the transnational capitalist Empire's virtuous sounding phrase "Green Agenda". The latter is, in turn, promoted to hide "Agenda 21" to seem more palatable to the brainwashed American public. Here is what the editor of Technocracy says about Agenda 21:
 
From its inception in 1992 at the United Nation’s Earth Summit, 50,000 delegates, heads of state, diplomats and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) hailed Agenda 21 as the “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society.” The 350-page, 40 chapter, Agenda 21 document was quite detailed and explicit in its purpose and goals. They warned us that the reorganization would be dictated through all-encompassing policies affecting every aspect of our lives, using environmental protection simply as the excuse to pull at our emotions and get us to voluntarily surrender our liberties.
 
But what this editor doesn't understand is that the capitalist ruling class's motive is to try to salvage the capitalist system, which has brought capitalists so much wealth and power, in their recognition that a finite planet cannot accept a system that results in unending growth. Or, to put it differently, this plan is a desperate attempt to save capitalism in a limit-bound finite planet. The editor compounds this misunderstanding with his well-indoctrinated ignorance about socialism.
 ... for reasons that have yet to be explained to the American people, when it comes to the $1.7 trillion cryptocurrency market – which is effectively a con-game based on the greater fool theory, nothing is regulated. Not the crypto currency; not the promoters; not the crypto exchanges; and not the firms that are providing as much as 100 times leverage to fuel this “rat poison squared,” as the legendary investor Warren Buffett has characterized Bitcoin. (See The Smartest Guys in the Room Call Bitcoin “Rat Poison Squared,” “a Colossal Pump-and-Dump Scheme” and “a Big Criminal Scam” but Federal Regulators Look the Other Way.)
  • Notes on Turning Seventy by John Steppling from his weblog. Steppling, who presently lives in Norway, is an American playwright, author, etc. who writes like somebody who has been extensively educated. And, it takes such a person (with a lot of time) to fully understand his writing. A few quotes from his article reveals much:
The most profound artworks demand something impossible from the viewer ... One problem is this idea that Kafka (but substitute any major novelist) is tracing out the shaping of the modern subject — through capitalism (or mastery over nature, etc) but then leaving capitalism as a universal. As if God created Capitalism on day 8. One cannot write criticism without being critical, of all things. Of oneself. If not, the class system is absolved, class struggle and political repression. They become a form of Nature.
 
And he concludes his article with this insightful statement:

Culture is an indicator for the mental and physical health of a society. The trend toward fascism is sickness. The fascist state is the apotheosis of sickness; physical and moral. The ruling class has no respect for anyone outside their small circle.
  • A Decade On: West’s War on Syria Continues by Brian Berletic from New Eastern Outlook. My reaction: The two main corporations that feed Empire's "news" agencies with propaganda, AP (Associated Press) and Reuters, keep the people of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire in ignorance about what is actually happening in the Mid-East.
On Tuesday, the new head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency suggested more Israeli covert attacks and assassinations inside Iran should be expected even as the US and other world powers are negotiating a revival of the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.
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