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, July 15, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, July 15, 2021

  • Unvaccinated health workers are “unethical and appalling”—experts [administrative authorities] want mandates: Health organizations call for mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for health care workers by Beth Mole from Ars Technica. My reaction: I personally know of one health professional who chooses not to have a Covid vaccination. But when I asked her recommendations for another primary care physician (my current doctor asked me if I had been vaccinated followed by a shaming lecture), she revealed her loyalty to her current employer by resisting to supply this information, and her reply exhibited fear characteristics. I think her answer was motivated by fear of losing her employment. My insertion in the title I think is more accurate. Medical doctors and other health professionals are no longer independent of medical facilities that are owned by investors and managed by administrators who are necessarily profit-oriented.
  • The Approaching Storm by CJ Hopkins, a wise former American satirist currently living in Germany, who, in this world of the New Normal (an open worldwide ward of delusional people who believe the Empire's current propagandists), is finding it hard to practice his craft of satire because the New Normal is beyond satire--from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc. He starts out with these comments and a warning that "GloboCap" (his word for the de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire) has planned for us:
So, it looks like GloboCap isn’t going to be happy until they have fomented the widespread social unrest — or de facto global civil war — that they need as a pretext to lock in the new pathologized totalitarianism and remake whatever remains of society into a global pseudo-medicalized police state, or that appears to where we’re headed currently. We appear to be heading there at breakneck speed. I don’t have a crystal ball or anything, but I’m expecting things to get rather ugly this Autumn, and probably even uglier in the foreseeable future.

Yes, friends, a storm is coming. 
  • Cuba and Color Revolution: A Cautionary Tale of the Next Phase of Forever-War by Joaquin Flores from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: The Author goes behind the headlines to explain the ongoing protests as inevitable due to Cuba's attempt to exist in the contradictions posed by living in a capitalist dominated world. Flores acknowledges the truth that "Color Revolution schemes cannot work unless there are real-existing grievances shared among large segments of the population." And he also acknowledges that the Cuban economy has been severely damaged by the Covid pandemic. Consequently, he also writes "... those harmed by the lockdowns were ordinary Cubans, not government officials or those with dollar accounts. And so the reaction we see today is a predictable one." The Cuban government is "caught between a rock and a hard place" (def.).
Legendary director Oliver Stone spoke with Afshin Rattansi about his new film, ‘JFK: Revisited: Through The Looking Glass’. The documentary delves deeply into inconsistencies in Kennedy’s autopsy, the handling of key pieces of evidence, and Lee Harvey Oswald’s alleged ties to the CIA.

‘We go into all the evidence on Oswald, all the original evidence, and we show that it’s a sham,’ Stone explains. ‘The autopsy, trajectories, bullet, rifle, fingerprints – above all, the autopsy – were a fraud.’

‘None of them hold up – they would’ve been thrown out of court on day one.’
  • Speaking of roads … by Philip Roddis, a Brit, from his weblog Steel City Scribblings. (Note: This article is about China's Belt and Road Initiative.)
  • The News Killed Satire by Patrick Armstrong from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: Armstrong regards "news" as propaganda which it is throughout the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire:
A couple of years ago a colleague suggested the idea that a group of us attempt to counter the rising passion of anti-Russia propaganda by satirising it. My reaction was that that was probably going to be a waste of effort because – this was in Trump’s time with Rachel Maddow and the rest spewing ever more preposterous conspiracy notions 24/7 – they were already well past the point of even being capable of noticing satire.

Nothing has made me change my mind since.
AL-BAYDA, YEMEN — President Joe Biden gave a lot of people a sense of cautious optimism when he took to the campaign trail and promised to bring a swift end to the Saudi-led war on Yemen. The oil-rich monarchy, supported heavily by the United States, has been waging arguably the deadliest military campaign of the past decade on the forgotten country for over six years, exacting a brutal humanitarian toll on its civilian population. 
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