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, December 11, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, December 11, 2021

  • 💥Overcoming Elite Child Sex Slavery & Pedophilia: An Interview With Survivor Anneke Lucas (Part 1 of 4) by Arjun Walia from The Pulse. This is a best post. (Note: It looks like you will be able with this post to access all 4 parts without signing up for a membership--but you may want to in order to access other posts and future posts on their new related website Explorer Lounge. In that case, you may want to pay for a membership. Also, for the hearing compromised, you can access Part 2 directly from YouTube which has improved sound and subtitles, also Part 3 (without English subtitles, but you have English transcript) and Part 4 (also without English subtitles. To access English transcripts, you must click on the "..." below the video on the right-hand side. I've also edited this for greater clarification throughout the afternoon.) My reaction: This is an illustration of how wealth, and especially its corollary power, can corrupt humans. They are both present under capitalism.
  • Thursday~Fascists by John Allen from his weblog on Medium. (Note: Unless this is your initial visit, you have to subscribe to a membership of $5/mo.--it's regarding the British court's decision regarding Julian Assange.)
  • 💥The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union -- Lessons for Socialists (Part 1). This visual post offers a discussion (1:08:29) with Carlos Martinez, the author of The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse, and Brian Becker, a longtime Marxist--from Breakthrough News. This is a best post. (Note: I have had personal experience with Becker when I lived in San Francisco in the 1980s while attending his speeches.) My brief commentary follows: 
If you are weary of the cable "news" being sandwiched between the "bread" of pharmaceutical ads and receiving news mostly laced with propaganda, this is for you. I know that you have in every institution been indoctrinated to believe in the evils of the Soviet Union and socialism, but listen to this with an open mind. The two discussants go a long way in Part 1 to piercing through the propaganda and indoctrination that has inundated American and Western societies for a century by capitalist ruling classes. I think we can look forward in future parts to understanding the difficulties that the Soviet Union experienced under the constant barrage of capitalist propaganda and indirect attacks on other nations, which were influenced by the example of the Soviet Union (Cuba, Nicaragua, Granada, Vietnam, Angola, etc), during the Cold War. 
 
I wanted to purchase Carlos Martinez's book from book stores in the US, but apparently it has been banned. I found it for sale via Abebooks, a business based in Victoria, BC, Canada, that supports independent bookstores, but through a bookstore in India! Yes, now they're censoring books in the USA!
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