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, August 12, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, August 12, 2021

  • After 20 years, Pentagon still lacks control over hired guns by David Isenberg from Responsible Statecraft. My reaction: This is further evidence that the ruling capitalist class has gone further down the road to fascism, indeed, if it has not already reached its inherent goal of updated fascism. The latter is the integration of capitalist entities with the government, but using different primary methods: capitalist ruling classes now use their control over all institutions in which they added, and emphasized, the use of sophisticated techniques of indoctrination and propaganda. It doesn't mean that they have dispensed entirely with more brutal methods to obtain compliance with their edicts, but the emphasis is with the new techniques in order to divide the population.
The US Army just conducted a three-day exercise in collaboration with the New York City Police and Fire Department. The exercise simulated a nuclear and biological event on the NYC subway system and Yankee Stadium.

Similar drills are scheduled for Philadelphia and Los Angeles in the coming months of September and October.

This raises concerns because the US Military has a track record for conducting experiments on the population using deadly pathogens without the population’s knowledge or consent.

Right now there is no proof that anything nefarious is taking place. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that government exercises and drills provide the perfect the cover to conduct covert and illegal operations. The same sort of cover a declared pandemic provides.
  • There Is No Will To Fight Climate Change by Bernhard, a German independent blogger, from his weblog Moon of Alabama. (Note: Bernhard looks at the climate change phenomenon, which is threatening the extinction of nearly all life on Earth, realistically. Only I think that he should re-entitled the article as "There Is No Will To Fight Climate Change among capitalist ruling classes".
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