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

Saturday, October 9, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, October 9, 2021

Task force chair Jeffrey Sachs, economics professor at Columbia University in New York, told the Wall Street Journal that he had shut down the scientist led investigation into how the COVID-19 pandemic started because of concerns about its links to the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organization run by task force member Peter Daszak.

“A lot is going on around the world that is not properly scrutinized or explained to the public,” Sachs told the newspaper, adding that the task force would broaden its scope to examine transparency and government regulation of risky laboratory research.
One of the worst consequences of converting the federal government to a national-security state has been the stultification or warping of the consciences of the American people. With unwavering allegiance to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, all too many Americans have sacrificed their sense of right and wrong at the altar of “national security,” the two-word term that has become the most important term in the political lexicon of the American people.
The Establishment-linked figure, George Friedman (of Stratfor fame), has outlined America’s new post-Afghan strategy on Polish TV. He said tartly: “When we looked for allies [for a maritime force in the Pacific] on which we could count – they were the British and the Australians. The French weren’t there”.
 
Crooke concludes his essay with these words:

Europe today is caught between a rock and a hard place. Does it possess the energy (and the humility) to look itself in the mirror, and re-position itself diplomatically? It would require altering its address to both Russia and China, in the light of a Realpolitik analysis of its interests and capabilities.
Instead of simply stopping its human rights abuses, the Israeli government has built an extensive and sophisticated public relations network across the West in order to protect itself from criticism.
 
Today, Lowkey speaks to one of the latest victims of that smear campaign, Professor David Miller. A prominent critic of the state of Israel’s policies, Miller was recently sacked from his position as Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol, after a pressure campaign involving Zionist student groups and even members of parliament, who accused him of “inciting hatred against Jewish students.”
  • How to survive our tragedy by Terry Eagleton from Unherd (a British-based website). My reaction: To be clear, I disagree with Eagleton when he writes the following sentences:
... climate change, which nobody ever intended but which is the consequence of billions of individual acts. Nobody ever turned the ignition key in their car or heaped a shovelful of coal on the fire with the idea of wiping out the human race. As Inspector Clouseau might say, no-one is guilty and everyone is guilty.
 
I view the system of capitalism and its powerful socioeconomic ruling class as guilty of the disappearance of humans. If humans had succeeded in establishing participative governance under socialism, we likely would not be where we are now: facing extinction. Under the system of socialism, the concern of scientists about global warming would have been listened to more seriously by socialist governments than by the capitalist ruling classes (with their addiction to profits and power) that have ruled over humanity from the beginning of the industrial civilization.
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