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, February 20, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, February 20, 2021

  • Dr. Cornel West Is A Free Man featuring West along with Jimmy Dore from the latter's channel on Rokfin. (Note: Listen to the 10:12m video to find out what the title means, and other insights.)
  • Role of NGOs in Promoting Neo-Colonialism by Syed Ehtisham from CounterCurrents. (Note: Read this to find out about NGOs. They can be used for good or for evil. The US/Anglo/Zionist Empire often uses them for subversion of nations that they do not like. This report offers extensive documentation.)
... the past that Klaus Schwab has worked to hide is explored in detail, revealing the involvement of the Schwab family, not only in the Nazi quest for an atomic bomb, but apartheid South Africa’s illegal nuclear programme. Especially revealing is the history of Klaus’ father, Eugen Schwab, who led the Nazi-supported German branch of a Swiss engineering firm into the war as a prominent military contractor. That company, Escher-Wyss, would use slave labor to produce machinery critical to the Nazi war effort as well as the Nazi’s effort to produce heavy water for its nuclear program. Years later, at the same company, a young Klaus Schwab served on the board of directors when the decision was made to furnish the racist apartheid regime of South Africa with the necessary equipment to further its quest to become a nuclear power.
In a society that maintains the illusion of freedom in order to prevent outrage and revolution, it does not serve rulers to stifle all dissent. Just the opposite in fact: their interests are served by having a small number of dissidents hanging around the fringes of society creating the illusion of freedom. If Johnny Hempshirt over there is allowed to stand on a soapbox and criticize the US war machine, then the US must be a free country.

So they don’t work to silence all dissent. What they do is work to make sure that dissent never hits a critical mass and goes mainstream.
My commentary follows:
This grabbed my attention because I don't see my lifetime of telling the truth (as I see it) has done much good. The capitalist ruling class has to maintain the illusion of freedom and "democracy" by keeping dissidents marginalized to the numerical fringes of acceptable debate. That way they can "eat their cake, and have it too", that is, they can preserve their propaganda about freedom and democracy, and at the same time, manage their self-serving rule.
 
I was only once asked, and this was in person, how I had permitted to write such vigorous criticism about the rule of capitalism. I answered that it didn't matter to the ruling class if a few voices criticized the social-political arrangements under their rule because it was permitted only to a few dissidents in order to maintain the illusion of democracy and civil rights. However, I've noticed in the last several years that I don't see any of my posts go viral, but I occasionally did before there was a concerted effort to marginalize dissident voices. I agree with Johnstone--they are only worried about numbers of dissidents.
 
I don't share her optimism that eventually things will change. I'm particularly concerned about the word "eventually"--that is, if we had enough time, we might eliminate the ruling capitalist class. I don't think we human animals have much time left on planet Earth before we also become extinct after our (I hold the capitalist classes primarily responsible) destabilization of the climate really sets in. I think we have devoted too (def #2) much time to ancient religions which erroneously put us in the center of the universe. We have failed to recognize that we are a part of the web of life on planet Earth. In the meantime, I and other dissidents will continue our work to tell the truth about our ruling class and the system which serves them with so much wealth and power.
However, I think we should also accept our ultimate defeat. Our masters in the ruling class (I hold upper-middle-class workers and their self-centered concerns primarily responsible) have been much too clever with their control of information. Unfortunately, we human animals can't seem to overcome the weakness of our species' Achilles heel, that is, the devotion to ourselves and our families; and instead with a class consciousness, a dedication to overcoming our subservience to a ruling class. Perhaps Margaret Thatcher was right when she said "there was no such thing as society, there were only individuals and their families".
  • The Nature of Money by M.K. Anderson from Current Affairs. My reaction: The author is an accountant and his closing comments reflect his views on the use of money in our existing capitalist societies:
... it’s a tool used to describe workers with the goal of extracting wealth and labor from them. It is an incredibly poor tool for holding the wealthy accountable, and so we will have to come up with other methods.

Friday, February 19, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, February 19, 2021

How can media be relied upon to report honestly on these industries or hold them to account if that media is being directly funded by them? Should we really expect journalists to be breaking stories about pharmaceutical price gouging, the enormous power of Silicon Valley, or the devastation caused by fossil-fuel company pollution if those companies are essentially paying their wages?

Advertising works, not only on consumers, but on outlets as well.
  • Millions will die if world fails on climate promises by Tim Radford from Climate News Network. My reaction: As long the international class of capitalists drive policies, we will not see them keep climate promises. Furthermore, the nations (especially their governments) that they reside in will not suffer any significant consequences for their failures, but the people who reside in them definitely will.

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, February 17, 2021

  • The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog on Substack. My reaction: What Greenwald misses is that the Deep State has taken over completely what honest journalism ever aspired to be throughout the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Only getting rid of capitalists, and all other hegemonic social-economic classes, can there ever be an honest media.
  • The Empire Attacks BDS For The Same Reason Nixon Started The Drug War by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. My reaction: Nixon's anti-(illicit) drug policies were well understood by activists in the early 1970s, but the public completely bought the lies. Now mainstream politicians, who are employed by the capitalist ruling class, are trying to profit off of marijuana sales to the consternation of the older-age public--the same people who bought the lies of the ruling class in the 1970s and beyond.
  • News Anchor Suggests Using Drone Strikes on Trump Supporters featuring Ben Swann of ISE trying via a 13 minute video presentation to correct the lies of contemporary "journalists" that have contributed to actual terrorism using the actual history of lies spread by ruling class media corporations. Such sociopathic "journalists" will still be hired by media corporations and will enjoy comfortable careers in the future, and a gullible public, while also pursuing comfortable careers, will continue to believe them. This self-reinforcing phenomenon will continue until sufficient numbers of the public will not accept such lies because they have been exposed to independent media.
I have posted numerous articles from the latter organization, but I've only recently discovered GPE. This video features Lynn Fries of the Global Political Economy (GPE) conducting an interview with Nick Buxton of TNI. This essential post points out the subversion of the United Nations by corporations. Previously, I've posted articles that have explored the ways that secretive capitalist agencies like the CIA have subverted governments to promote Empire interests, but now they are corrupting the UN with their class-based motives of profit and power.
My impression of TNI was of a do-gooder (def) type of organization that believes that capitalism and a meaningful democracy were not incompatible. Reflecting on Buxton's remarks, I believe they are waking up to their contradictions. (See my remarks about this organization a year ago.)
(Note: Every time I consider retiring from maintaining this website, I encounter an excellent article that I want to spread far and wide. As long as this keeps up, I won't retire until forced to by ill-health. If there is someone out there in the blogosphere that can help out, I would greatly appreciate it.)

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Quite simply, that being so invested, so immersed, in one particular ‘reality’, others’ ‘truths’ then will not – cannot – be heard. They do not stand out proud above the endless flat plain of consensual discourse. They cannot penetrate the hardened shell of a prevailing narrative bubble, or claim the attention of élites so invested in managing their own version of reality.

The ‘Big Weakness’? The élites come to believe their own narratives – forgetting that the narrative was conceived as an illusion, one among others, created to capture the imagination within their society (not others’).
  • Corporate Criminals by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My reaction: Corporations only serve the ruling capitalist class, and as such they wreck havoc on the rest of the population in every society.  Corporations together with the financiers (banks, the Fed, etc.) are the motors of capitalism that exist to extract wealth from societies, and they use this wealth to further their power and control over societies.

Monday, February 15, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, February 15, 2021

  • Russia: Origin and consequences of the debt repudiation of February 10, 1918 by Eric Toussaint from CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt). This is a best post because it provides the true history of the very important financial aspects of the Russian Revolution that was missing in your education (if you lived in western capitalist nations). My reaction: Could it be that a nation must have a revolution to repudiate its debts to capitalist nations? I think, yes, if this history has any significance for our current time. 
  • The Danger of Political "Medics" by Brian Berletic, an ex-Marine living with his family in Thailand, from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. (Note: In this post Berletic exposes a common practice of US-backed subversive forces in various countries, this time in Thailand.)

Sunday, February 14, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, February 14, 2021

The expert began her presentation by indicating that the “concrete base” of Operation Condor was in Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet after the overthrow of Salvador Allende in September 1973. Plan Condor and Operation Condor were launched by U.S. intelligence services. 
Operation Condor included three phases designed by the FBI (U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation) and with input from the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency). They were aimed at “finishing off all the important exiles abroad in each of the Southern Cone countries”, she explained. 
Included in this scheme was the training of Latin American military personnel at the U.S. Southern Command and the meetings of the U.S. Armed Forces. This “ensured the dependence of our region”, she affirmed. Referring to the founding of the Condor Plan, she said that it took place on November 25, 1975 in Chile at the invitation of General Manuel Contreras, head of the Chilean political police DINA (National Intelligence Directorate) with the participation of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
But this US/Anglo/Zionist Empire's subversion of nations continues today especially in Belarus, Russia, Myanmar, and China under the banner of "human rights".
  • Conspiracy Theories Are Caused By Government Secrecy by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. My reaction: She writes: "All the fixation on the way unregulated speech on the internet has contributed to the circulation of conspiracy theories conveniently ignores the real cause of those theories: government secrecy." I would go further: If government agencies and their collaborators in media corporations did not intentionally lie about their actions, there would be no need for conspiracy theories. It is secrecy, censorship of independent media, and deception that necessitates the appearance of conspiracy theories. Clearly, more Americans than ever before are mistrustful about information released from government sources and media corporations. There is a distinct feeling that they've been lied to so much in the past: the assassinations of JFK, ML King, RK, Malcolm X, the Vietnam War, 9/11, War on Terror, etc.
  • The New Normal requires a NEW Response by Catte Black and Vanessa Beeley from Off-Guardian (based in Britain). (Note: You will to know what PTB means--the Powers that Be--I hate such references to the ruling capitalist classes. "Elites", "the rich", "billionaires", or "oligarchies" aren't much better.) My reaction: People are beginning to get impatient with their governments' management of this pandemic.
  • Climate-Change Summary featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson (via YouTube) summarizing the science which indicates abrupt climate change (via YouTube).