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, November 4, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, November 4, 2021

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter suspended hundreds of influential pro-Sandinista journalists and activists days before Nicaragua’s November 7 elections, falsely claiming they were government trolls.
  • Mass Media Hasten To Help Pentagon Exonerate Itself In Afghan Airstrike by Australian Caitlin Johnstone with her American husband, Tim Foley, also reading the script (but you may miss supporting examples, illustrations, etc.)--from her weblog. This post discloses an illustration of how the ruling class constructs the "news" that you obtain from social media and corporate news sources.
AP, along with Reuters and AFP, is one of just three news agencies which write the bulk of international news media reporting in the western world. Corporate media outlets who generally can’t be bothered to do their own original reporting on international affairs often run articles published by those agencies, along with whatever propaganda, spin, and journalistic malpractice they happen to contain. A quick search shows that this AP report has already been picked up and run verbatim by Politico, The Independent, Yahoo News, and many other outlets.

Not only there is there clearly nothing “independent” about government officials investigating their own agencies, but the possibility of any actual independent review of the airstrike has been made impossible, since the Pentagon’s report on the matter has been classified.
  • How the CIA Trained Violent Tibetan Extremists To Stoke Unrest In China featuring a video interview (08:28) with Ken Hammond, Professor of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University, conducted by Rania Khalek from Breakthrough News. My reaction: Young people are more informed than my generation regarding Tibet. I remember when the Dalai Lama visited the Seattle area, public schools bused their student to listen to his address. I remember all the bumper stickers saying something like "Free Tibet" of graduate students of universities that I attended.

The following posts are selected by Brad Fredricks (and his reactions, commentaries, etc.) for this website:
New OSHA and CMS Rules Mean Two-Thirds of All Workers Now Covered by Vaccination Rules from The White House. They will require employers with 100 employees to:
  • Get Their Employees Vaccinated by January 4th and Require Unvaccinated Employees to Produce a Negative Test on at Least a Weekly Basis
  • Pay Employees for the Time it Takes to Get Vaccinated
  • Ensure All Unvaccinated Employees are Masked
  • Employers are subject to requirements for reporting & record keeping
My comments:
 
Hot on the heels of The Lancet Report, which states "fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts", one must wonder why any of this is being forced on businesses and people despite the obvious issues around leaky vaccines (read as ineffective).
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