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

Monday, August 23, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, August 23, 2021

A new American president is presenting a program for renewal of human values in the marketplace unheard of since the 1930s but still projecting American military domination and environmental destruction far beyond the awareness of most Americans. Continued insistence that Russia and China are major global threats to everyone and not just American monopoly capitalists resonate not only in the cosmic void between the ears of our mentally disabled foreign policy experts but echo in the minds of innocent Americans since that’s all they get from major, and all too often minor media.

The charge that China is conducting genocide on its Islamic people coming from the butchers of hundreds of thousands of Islamic people in the middle east would be a dreadful sick joke if not so incredibly evil, but poor souls condemned to network media remain stuck in a misinformation chamber amplifying our ruling power’s message day in and day out.
  • Until you realise … by Philip Roddis, an independent British blogger, from his weblog Steel City Scribblings. 
Until you realise the Western world is ruled by criminals, and that corporate media’s first loyalty is not to truth but – via market discipline and beneath a show of fiery independence on lesser issues – to those criminals, you will continue to have the wool pulled over your eyes on all the things that most matter.

In fact there’s almost no limit to the sense addling fairy tales you’ll buy.
  • EarthNewspaper.com - All The Honest News Fit To Publish -- (Note: I cannot reach this website today, and have had difficulties in the past. Either the administrators of this website are careless in formatting their website or our masters are busy censoring their website. Which do you think is an explanation?)
International media has focused on Afghanistan these past few days and rightly so as the appalling situation left behind continues its descent into utter chaos. Little mentioned however has been the possibility of restructuring Afghanistan’s supply and trade chains after twenty years of war. While the Russians will largely provide security in the region, China will provide the financing and help build the infrastructure and encourage industrialization and trade in return for peace and security. People tend not to fight when they are in the process of transforming their lives for the better, and Beijing understands this, although much of the social problems are the Taliban’s responsibility to solve.

There are several options for China to instigate trade routes with Afghanistan.
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