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, May 1, 2021

Update for Saturday, May 1, 2021



Update on my note of April 11, 2021:

As you can see, if you are steady followers of my website, I have been able to follow my old schedule following my loss of balance around April 1. I will continue to follow this old schedule with interruptions due to medical and dental appointments which in the future I expect to interfere with my daily routine. I've been taking most Saturdays off from this routine to catch up on tasks from my daily life. This will continue. And, I will take days off when I simply don't feel well enough to review and post entries that I consider very significant. Thus, in the future, you can expect more frequent interruptions in the daily posts of recommended articles.

Briefly regarding my health, I've recovered about 75% of my physical balance, and I notice that I tire rather sooner than before when I engage in routine activities. This is to be expected as I approach 85 years of age.

Friday, April 30, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, April 30, 2021

  • Why COVID Vaccines Are Dream Come True for Central Banks by Children's Health Defense Team from their website. (Note: This article contains so many links that I have not accessed, so I am posting this to give you information. I consider Children's Health Defense as an organization that is considered trustworthy and sincerely devoted to our health. However, said that, I don't feel the evidence they offer justifies targeting specifically central banks. I consider central banks as only one part of the capitalist Deep State that controls the entire US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.
  • Biden Lied About Yemen from Caitlin Johnstone's weblog. (Note: This article includes narration and transcript.)
  • Washington Post Officially Stops Counting Biden's Lies featuring Jimmy Dore, Ron Placone, and Aaron Maté exposing and issuing satirical comments about Biden's lies and the Washington Post. If you wish for more of Jimmy Dore and company exposing America's fake version of democracy, listen to this.

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, April 29, 2021

  • What will we lose? by Alex Bartlett from Off-Guardian (Note: The author is living and working in the Ontario province of Canada.) 
"The United States and its NATO allies have weaponised the issue of human rights; using it to attack their geopolitical opponents particularly Russia and China. Sadly, the mainstream media in the West fails to point out the glaring hypocrisy of this weaponisation of human rights."

In Mid February, the Biden regime indicated that it was carrying out an ‘inter agency’ review with a view to closing Guantánamo Bay by the end of the president’s term of office. Sounds eerily familiar. Barack Obama within days of taking office also promised to close the infamous prison which stills holds 40 people in detention.

The overwhelming majority of media outlets in the West carrying news of Biden’s promise fail their readers. They fail to remind their readers that the journalist, who exposed the violations of human rights committed by the US at Guantánamo Bay, is locked up in a British supermax prison.

My reaction: I particularly liked this insight from "The Edge of the Narrative Matrix":
 
When people object to criticisms of the US-centralized empire, it isn’t because those criticisms are unfounded. It’s because if those criticisms are valid, it will mean everything they believe about the world is wrong. It would be a kind of death for them, and people fear death. Because perception is reality, finding out that your entire worldview is wrong is experientially the same as losing your entire world. Losing your entire world, your belief systems, your knowing, your understanding and all the stability it gives you, is like experiencing death.

That’s why we’ve got whole cognitive defense systems in place designed to keep information that is incongruous with our worldview out of our heads. We protect our worldview like we’re protecting our own identity, because, in a very real sense, we are.
 
And those "cognitive defense systems" have been put in our heads over the past 75 years by the ruling capitalist class via all their institutions in order to protect their system, which, not coincidentally, supplies them with so much wealth and power, from any "alternative" thoughts. Sadly for many, it already is too late.

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, April 28, 2021

  • mRNA vaccines: Pros and cons by Dennis Etler from CGTN, (Note: I post this from a credible source in the interest of balanced reporting.) My reaction: "It seems that many people are highly skeptical of this and other new technologies." People are skeptical because they have been lied to consistently about important events. And, when the ruling class puts so much fear, uses fake statistics (from PCR tests, bribe hospitals, pressure doctors to claim patients died for Covid-19, etc.), and with billionaires behind the promotion of mRNA vaccines, there are sound reasons to be suspicious.
  • Do Vaccines Make Us Healthier? by Children's Health Defense Team from their The Defender weblog. (Note: This article consists of a 14:31m video review of medical research.)
Iranian missile technology as top strategic deterrence. Now that’s the shadowplay that turns Vienna into a sideshow.
  • When Did the “Cold War” End? Part III by Vladimir Acosta from Internationalist 360°. (Note: Because our institutions will rarely tell the truth, I always like to inform people of a true history. This article reports on the period from the fall of the Soviet Union, and is an accurate piece of history as you will ever find.)
There is much to be learned about this story that Harris doesn't mention. It is the story of the human species whose failure to adapt to the web of life on our quite exceptional planet will cause our species, along with many others, to become extinct within decades. Sadly, it is much too late to do anything to prevent this from happening.
 
It is also a story of capitalism, a system that promotes the accumulation of wealth within families who use all manner of sociopathic weapons to accumulate their wealth: violence, bribes, deception, etc. And with wealth comes power and control. In the latter stages of capitalism that we are in now, we find wealth/power consolidated in very few hands, and, like their ancestors, capitalists will do everything they can to enhance their wealth/power: the use of mainly deception, bribes, and their control over careers. But these weapons don't assure success for capitalists in every situation. Then they, like their ancestors, can rely on the use of outright violence that stems from their overwhelming control over military and police. Have noticed that government spending on the military has gone up substantially every year? 
  • Science Update: Human Population Growth features Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist who has focused on the climate crisis, from his YouTube channel in a 6:06m YouTube video. My reaction: Notice he says roughly at 02:36m "too many rich people like those from the United States and Japan and western Europe and the so-called First World--that's what brought us to the brink. That's what brings us this mess that we're in right now." Aren't all these countries a part of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire that practice thoroughly a capitalist system? And he wrongly includes under the heading "rich people" all the people in these countries. I forgive him because he is a biologist--not a social scientist nor much less, a socialist social scientist.

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, April 27, 2021 (abbreviated post)

The most important axiom for understanding how the U.S. corporate media functions is that there is never accountability for those who serve as propagandists for the U.S. security state. The opposite is true: the more aggressively and recklessly you spread CIA narratives or pro-war manipulation, the more rewarded you will be in that world.
 
That is why sociopaths perform so well for their masters--people like Jeffrey Epstein and his pals in the ruling class. They follow the Margaret Thatcher amoral principle, you know, "there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals and their families". That is why they had to kill Epstein. That is why drug corporations are making billions of dollars off vaccines which they cannot be sued due to any damages or deaths. 
  • The Day The World Ended by Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian independent blogger from her weblog. My reaction: I often imagine this event.
  • A Tightening Circle of Replacement Politics by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Note: You will need to know what "Fifth-generation warfare" means.) My reaction: Crooke describes the directors of the ruling class as inconsistent in their pursuance of policies. It could be an expression of desperation or a designed "replacement politics" to further manipulate ordinary Americans? Who knows? But if I were a betting man, I would place my money on the latter. The directors of the ruling capitalist class, who really run our government, have long been practicing 5th generation war on ordinary Americans, and out of habit they are doing it again--but at an accelerated pace wrapping themselves in virtue: adopting minority causes and "cancelling culture" of their adversaries. But it's all fakery!

Monday, April 26, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, April 26, 2021

... the Gates Foundation, like the MNCs it so closely resembles, seeks to manufacture consent for its activities through the manipulation of public opinion. Happily, not everyone is fooled: popular resistance to the designs of Big Philanthropy is mounting. The struggle is broad-based, ranging from the women activists who exposed the criminal activities of PATH in India, to the anti-sterilization activities of African-American groups like The Rebecca Project, to the anti-vaccine agitations in Pakistan following the revelation that the CIA had used immunization programs as cover for DNA collection. Surely a worldwide campaign to eradicate the toxic philanthropy and infectious propaganda of the Gates Foundation would be in the best traditions of public health.
  • 💥Maturity Is Discovering How Everything You Believe Is A Lie by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. This is a best post. My reaction: Her weblog posts are getting more and more philosophical. And, I notice the male narration has a distinctly American accent to it. I also know that Caitlin is married to an American. Doubts creep in about who is running this weblog and how much. Anyway, I very much like their posts because much of them have the clear ring of truth.
  • 💥Xi's Boao Forum Speech And The Messed Up Reporting Around It by Bernhard, an independent German blogger, from his weblog Moon of Alabama. This is a best post. (Note: If this interests you, you may also be interested in Jimmy Dore's 9:42m reaction.) My reaction: I gave this as a best post because I think it represents all major news agencies in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Reuters is more fundamental than major media corporations because it determines news coverage that media corporations distribute to their customers. Bernhard leaves a very cogent summary:
The Reuters piece about Xi's speech at Boao is framed with a 'western' mindset and colored by 'western' hegemonic ideology. It leaves out the essence of the speech then adds bits that make the reader assume that the high level international event is a solely Chinese one, thereby disturbing its context.

It does not inform but propagandizes.
  • Union Labor’s Great Detour: 1947 to 2021 featuring Jack Rasmus regarding an accurate history of the labor movement (in an audio format lasting nearly an hour) since the 1930s beginning with the Wagner Act. (Note: This was during the late industrial capitalist phase of capitalism much-touted by Prof. Michael Hudson, son of Trotskyist parents.) My reaction: Hudson's parents must be "rolling in their graves"--(def.).
  • The Billionaires Who Couldn’t Kick Straight by Sam Pizzigati from CounterPunch. My reaction: Even the culture of capitalism has spread to sports in Europe after first corrupting it in the USA and Britain, the two main organizers of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Could one expect otherwise?
So the future of global football’s ecosystem remains perilous. In a world where wealth keeps concentrating at ferocious rates, the sport’s more egalitarian traditions will always be at risk. We can’t expect free and fair sports, in other words, as long as billionaires in search of playthings and profits still walk the Earth.
  • Visions of the Future featuring James Corbet (57:25m) from his weblog, The Corbett Report, pointing to what will happen in the future as reported by our masters in the transnational capitalist class, or in Corbett's words, the "would-be controllers of the world" have planned for us.
  • A History of the CIA in Congo by T.J. Coles from CounterPunch. The ruling class's CIA has figured to release their heavily redacted documents to the public because they no longer fear a backlash from them. Coles documented his report primarily on released CIA documents in the early 2000s; the last was released in 03/09/2012. I counted 13 such documents (not counting the CIA's historian written with comprehensive disclaimers). The CIA lies beyond the official government facade that was created by the early Founding Fathers who feared democratic rule. (See my commentary here.) You see, the public won't believe that the same operations are conducted today by this very secretive service accountable to no one but the ruling capitalist class.

Sunday, April 25, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Sunday, April 25, 2021

  • Alison Morrow Interview – MSM COVID Blind Spots, Willful Misinformation Or Manufacturing Consent? from The Last American Vagabond featuring Ryan Cristián interviewing Morrow (1:03:52) who worked in MSM and quit them after realizing that they were engaged in propaganda. (Note: Cristián and Morrow focus much of their discussion on why people engage in propaganda.) My reaction: Sociopathic people will rationalize all their cooperative efforts with propagandists because they want to sustain careers to furnish their families with all the goodies they want above all other considerations. I refer to it as the Thatcher principle of amorality: "there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals and their families".