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

Friday, July 2, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, July 2, 2021 (final edited version)

  • 💥Rachel Maddow "Is Not News" Says Court Ruling! featuring Jimmy Dore (via his YouTube channel--27:43m) with guest Glenn Greenwald initially using Rachel Madow's show to comical effect. Greenwald eventually and seriously offers insightful comments on the court's defense of Madow as "not news". This is a best post.
Perhaps a multi-polar world is all we could hope for at the end of WWII, but that was denied by the rise of the de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire to replace the Third Reich after the latter was defeated. Ehret's take on this event corresponds to mine as reflected in my 2017 post. Churchill's future hopes with the emergence of the de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire were realized far more than FDR's vision of a multipolar world.

It is also telling that Churchill could not bring himself to accept the Order of the Garter at the end of WW2 since he failed to achieve his primary mission as Britain’s wartime leader. Unbeknownst to many historians even today, Churchill’s primary mission was not the winning of the war, or the crushing of fascism, but rather the salvation of the British Empire which had created a Frankenstein monster that refused to play the second string in the New World Order realizing that Germany’s military power gave Hitler the edge he needed to lead in this dystopian dance.

However only a week after Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, Churchill’s conscience allowed him to accept the honor. Perhaps the rabid imperialist looked upon the new Cold War age that he had earlier set into motion alongside the Anglo-American Alliance that he put into place that the rabid imperialist could sleep satisfied knowing that he did his job.
As America closes in on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the Feds want the public to believe that unknown terrorist organizations are recruiting your neighbor[s] to become a domestic extremist. But it is not just any neighbor, this time it is far-right "extremists" or White supremacists and Trump supporters who they want to recruit.

For years DHS officials have warned Americans of the dangers that lurk just outside their front doors or worse in the far-flung Middle East where extremists are plotting to bomb us, shoot us, or poison our water systems. The only difference to the terrors that await Americans is that now they are allegedly targeting a person's ideological beliefs. 
 
And the author asks: 

What does this mean for Americans?
... the theorists believe that the WEF and their partners are not simply warning the public out of the kindness of the heart. Rather, they believe that the individuals behind the push for public-private partnerships are actually the ones behind the attacks, or simply allowing them to happen in order to take advantage of the inevitable calls for resetting our digital infrastructure. In other words, they believe the recent hacks have either been faked or allowed to take place so governments and their corporate partners can implement their pre-existing agendas. Problem – Reaction – Solution. They believe that exercises and simulations like Cyber Polygon are actually a sign of things to come. These exercises are not simply meant to train cyber security officials and prepare corporations, but instead meant to simulate real world events that are being planned or expected to happen.
  • Why’s Europe Divided on Positive Ties with Russia? by Salman Rafi Sheikh from New Eastern Outlook. My reaction: Europe has been long considered by the de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire as belonging to it, but it is emerging from that status to one that is on the brink of change.
  • The Privatization of Medicare by Dave Lindorff from CounterPunch. (Note: This article is behind an account or subscription wall (which means you will receive a ton of email and/or the sale of your contact information to other vendors). My reaction: This post also signals a privatization of CounterPunch. My commentary follows:
I have for the past year been wondering what the ruling class was up to in their incessant and deceptive Joe Namath ads which promise free services as a carrot to sign-on to private insurance but results in the reality of skyrocketing medical care costs. Only now, when it is too late, we see articles about this new arrangement. 
 
It turns out that I've been stuck with a large bill which I was careful to prevent. You see, I know what Medicare covers and what it does not. But medical care to a large extent has been privatized under the ruling class deceptive promotion of private insurance that covers everything that Medicare doesn't cover. In the past I had such supplemental private insurance, but I have in recent years dispensed with such coverage because I was enjoying good health.
 
I recently changed doctors having been deceived by the local Mayo Clinic in which I had substantial evidence that an administrator was spying on my communications with my primary care physician. Recently I awoke one morning in April of this year without my balance control. That is, when I stood up I immediately fell over. This was a considerable shock to me after a lifetime in which this balance-control was second nature to me. So, I went to a new primary physician at a new clinic to correct this problem.
 
Under this new ruling class privatization arrangement for people of retirement age required some retraining of their intake clerks. Clearly the new medical care vendor trained its clerks to add "initial visit" whenever a new patient applied to their service. So, whenever these new patients applied for medical care, the phrase "initial visit" was added into their interview. So, I was fooled by this semantic trick when the intake clerk asked me if it was an initial visit, to which I replied that it was. That phrase was immediately coded as "initial visit" to designate a new category of medical care that could be charged by the new private vendor of medical services. Under the "initial visit" category I was supposed to receive a physical examination and a general workup by the new physician. I actually received only treatment for my new balance problem, but my physician wrote up my visit by including his interpretation of my past laboratory test results at Mayo Clinic, which was previously explained to me by my former physician. And, in addition, I was asked by this physician if I received a pandemic vaccination, to which I replied "no". Thereafter I had to submit to a shaming lecture for not getting vaccinated.
 
Much later, I received a shocking bill for not only this "initial visit", but for the referral to a physical therapist as well for re-training sessions to correct my sense of balance. I am presently contesting this bill. Wish me luck.
 
So, don't be fooled by this semantic new category. I'm not sure how you can avoid the added bill for services you didn't receive. And I'm not sure what deceptive practices lie ahead to watch out for under this new privatization arrangement that effectively does an end-run around Medicare. 
 
Anyway, I wanted to make a point that CounterPunch is also capitalizing on this new arrangement by charging you, in one way or another, to have access to an article which explains this new arrangement to bilk seniors. So, effectively CounterPunch is joining the ruling class in this new project of privatization. But, in this instance, I am not deceived. I knew all along that the people of CounterPunch were simply functioning as a self-righteous release for all the pent-up anger that people felt toward the machinations and deceptions of the ruling capitalist class, but nothing more.
 
Now I want to address the issue of counterarguments. especially the argument that such websites should offer adequate compensation for their staff to explain what is going on in society. I come down on the side of asking for voluntary donations to defray the costs of these writers where the truth about our class-structured society is involved, and not subscriptions. 
Unless we can purge from our cells everything within us that resembles Donald Rumsfeld, there is no future for Homo sapiens on this planet. We must evolve beyond everything he stood for, as individuals, as a society, and as a species, and move into a peaceful and collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem. 
 
Because we are unable to "purge from our cells everything within us that resembles Donald Rumsfeld", Mother Nature is going to evict us from our Earth planet.
  • 💥Guy McPherson Interview and conversation pt. 1 featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via Bct Member's YouTube channel--25:53m) in a 2017 interview conducted by Dave Thompson. This is a best post. Note: Thompson emailed me this interview in which he challenged my statement following the posting of the McPherson video (the last post) on June 30 (2021). In this post I remarked:
McPherson doesn't understand that capitalists, our ruling masters who dominate science as well as all other institutions, must obsessively pursue profits, and its concomitant, power, under their system of capitalism. Because our masters are addicted to the twin opiates of profits and power, they don't recognize that a system that requires unlimited growth on a finite planet is a contradiction. This contradiction will inevitably result in the extinction of most species, including ours, on our very unique planet Earth.
 
Thompson posed a counterargument as follows:
 
Read his works starting with his book" Walking Away From Empire" and from another book "Going Dark" . To Quote "Going Dark". The dedication is "To all those who oppose the well-behaved, small-minded corporate drones who know we have no future and yet still go to their inane desk jobs, attempting to destroy the remaining shards of the living planet."
 
Dr. McPherson knows full well that capitalism is the driving force behind the destruction of the biosphere and the near term extinction of all life on earth. Yours Truly, Dave

P.S You can publish my name in your correction if you please. I personally know Dr McPherson and have interviewed him.

An open message to Dave Thompson: I very much appreciate your email, especially the excellent attached video interview you conducted (posted above), and permission to publicly deal with this openly.

I don't have time to read the recommended books or the inclination to do so given the condition of my eyes, but I have followed closely his posts since mid-2016 (a single post in early 2010). I also know friends of his in Oregon, and they have never corrected me on this point. I've never read or heard where he cites capitalism as being the cause of abrupt climate destabilization. McPherson always cites "industrialization" or "civilization" as the cause. (Unless Thompson equates the abstractions of these latter two terms with capitalism, he is wrong--I dealt with the use of abstractions to hide reality in this post.) I don't expect otherwise from McPherson because he is a physical scientist and not a social scientist or Marxist.
 
I don't know if socialist countries could have avoided this catastrophe, but they certainly would have had a better chance to listen to their scientists. Look at my argument in the first post above in 2016--I stand by that today. But since that time, I have given up the possibility that socialism can save us. That is the reason in late 2019 I finally added "(Not)" to the title of my website.
 
Postscript: I read an email response on 7/3/2021 from Dave Thompson as follows:

Perhaps something is being lost in semantics? Industrialized civilization and capitalism go hand in hand and McPhearson is well aware of this relationship. I thank you for your work I follow your posts daily.
  •  Explained: Trisos et al. 2020 by Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via his YouTube channel--23:09m), who has fearlessly focused his attention and career on the climate crisis.
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