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, December 16, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, December 16, 2021

... it is not easy to find information on scientific research not funded by pharmaceutical companies or organizations that depend on multinational drug companies. In fact, national and international drug agencies are funded by Big Pharma (the European Medicines Agency is 85 percent funded by multinational pharmaceutical companies). Even data from natural experiments are usually interpreted in an overly alarmist manner. For example, the Covid-19 disease mortality predictions were based on the mortality rate on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which “was 1 percent…but this was a largely elderly population in a crowded” and artificially ventilated environment (p. 172). 
 
A little later I found this sentence:
 
Regarding the Danish researcher’s [Peter Gotzsche] thoughts on the SARS-Cov-2 outbreak, his position can be summarized in these lines: it was an overly alarmist health emergency caused by generalized panic, affecting ordinary people and health care workers.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s book attacking Anthony Fauci and the medical establishment has become a publishing sensation, spending more than a full week as the #1 Amazon bestseller and racking up over 2,600 reviews, 94% of them five-star.
 
Now after nearly a month of stunned silence, the American media is finally taking belated notice. This morning the Associated Press released a 4,000 word hit-piece harshly attacking the most prominent public figure in America’s much-vilified anti-vaxxing movement.
 
And, a little later:
 
Almost half of the entire book under attack—around 200 pages—is devoted to the presenting and promoting the astonishing claim that everything we have been told about HIV/AIDS for more than 35 years probably amounts to a hoax. 
  • The Assange Case Explained Simply 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.
The Assange issue is simple. What makes it seem complicated is the lies people have been fed by the media class whose job is to manipulate the public into consenting to the agendas of the US power alliance and its war machine.
It’s looking increasingly likely that the US Federal Reserve and the globalist powers that be will use the dramatic rising of inflation as their excuse to bring down the US financial markets and with it, crash the greatest financial bubble in history. The enormous inflation rise since the malicious political lockdowns and the trillions of dollars in emergency spending by both Trump and Biden, coupled with the continuation of the Fed’s unprecedented near-zero interest rate policies and asset purchases of billions in bonds to keep the bubble inflated a bit longer– have set the stage for an imminent market collapse. Unlike what we are told, it is deliberate and managed. 
  • What Do Men Tell Us about Pornography? What Does Pornography Tell Us about Men? by Derrick Jensen from Dissident Voice. My reaction: This gives a false analysis that encourages the divide between women and men. What this analysis misses is that control permeates our entire capitalist culture. As such, both women and men are indoctrinated in its control features. There is no appropriate or healthy pornography (material that stimulates erotic fantasies). There is just pornography which is a reflection of our capitalist culture which emphasizes control: over employees, over societies and ordinary people, over minorities (when our ruling class attempts to divide us), over nations when the ruling capitalist classes always seek to dominate them to obtain cheap labor or resources, and over women (which is the same dynamic as applied to minorities). Women as well as men and every race/ethnic group especially in the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire are infected with this indoctrination-virus. The challenge is to identify the elements in our common pornography that perpetuate this distortion. This Jensen accomplishes.
  • Why it's hard to bring manufacturing back to US by Ding Gang from Global Times, a major Chinese publication. My reaction: It is not repetitive or hard work that motivated owners of industry to transplant their corporations to foreign lands. No, it was profits. The transplantation to foreign countries by privately-owned industries in search of greater profits, which has been going on for nearly 50 years, has had the effect of de-skilling the American workforce. The "owners" of these properties gave them the control, which is the case under capitalism, and combined with the advances in technology (created by this workforce) enabled these "owners" to transplant their entire operations to foreign lands to take advantage of cheaper labor outside of the USA. The "owners" are loyal to profits and not to American workers which would be the case with publicly-owned industry under a socialist system. I can remember that "Yankee know-how" was deservedly famous around the world, but those days are long gone.
Absent from mainstream discourse on Ghislaine Maxwell’s ongoing trial is any mention of the ties, not only of herself, but her family, to Israeli intelligence. Those ties, forged by Ghislaine’s father Robert Maxwell, are critical to understanding Ghislaine’s history and her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual blackmail and trafficking network.
  • The Year of the New Normal Fascist by CJ Hopkins, normally a comedian living in Berlin, from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc. Hopkins returns to parody--what else is there? This holiday season ...
The message is, there will be no more unauthorized presidents, no more leaving the European Union, no more “populist” rebellions against the global hegemony of global-capitalism and its soul-crushing, valueless “woke” ideology. GloboCap is done playing grab-ass. They announced that back in March of 2020. They informed us in unmistakable terms that our lives were about to change, forever. They branded and advertised this change as “the New Normal,” in case we were … you know, cognitively challenged. They did not hide it. They wanted us to understand exactly what was coming, a global-capitalist version of totalitarianism, in which we will all be happy little fascist “consumers” showing each other our “compliance certificates” in order to be allowed to live our lives.
 
My reaction: It seems that we are now living in a fascist world which is the ultimate trajectory of capitalism. It also seems that, out of all proportion, many comedians are challenging, or engaging in sarcastic parody with, the onerous restrictions that the ruling classes are imposing on us ordinary people which they are labeling "the new normal". 
  • Humanitarian Hawks Demand War on Ethiopia, National Guard Deploys to the Horn by Ann Garrison from Black Agenda Report. My reaction: While distracted by the confusion generated by the ruling class over promoting the Democratic Party (traditionally a "workingman's political party" permitted by them), the fake "woke" policies and the Critical Race Theory, ordinary Americans unfortunately don't pay much attention to this development. Add to this the corona pandemic and all the social restrictions, what is "left" and what is "right" on the political spectrum, the ruling capitalist class has enjoyed one success after another.
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