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 15, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, May 15, 2021 (Abbreviated post)

It appears that the directors of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire are launching an effort to breakdown the allegiance of troops to protect their own country and transfer the allegiance to NATO, the army of the Empire. By the same logic, I'm wondering if the billionaire directors of the capitalist Empire are using the pandemic to transfer the commitment of citizens have toward their individual nations to the Empire and its NATO army.
 
By grossly enhancing the threat of a disease (Covid-19), which evidence (in spite of censorship) suggests that the disease is no worse than ordinary influenza (see this and this) and other anomalies reported by censored medical scientists, but is more contagious through gain-of-function research at the Empire's various laboratories, the directors of said Empire are using emergency medical strategies to get their individual citizen's commitment to obey the diktats of both medical and political authorities. By using medical emergency strategies, they could weaken citizens commitment to constitutional restrictions of freedom of speech and assembly and strengthen the authority of political leaders who are at least nominally, if not wholly committed, to NATO. Thus the directors of the Empire would prepare the groundwork for the coming titanic struggle against Russia, China, and their supporters in their efforts to establish a multilateral world and free of the Empire's domination. 
 
Just a thought, which crept into my mind this morning, and I wanted to share it with you. But it's probably one of those "conspiracy theories" that the authorities are so worried about (sarcasm).
  • 💥The Stakes of Finding COVID-19’s Origins by Nathan J. Robinson from Current Affairs. This is a best post. (Note: He writes according to official reports that "Well over 3 million people have been killed by COVID-19 around the world, including over half a million in this country." But Robinson tries to reconcile this estimate with the fact that the National Institute of Health, a government agency, "funded a project in Wuhan that “set out to create novel coronaviruses with the highest possible infectivity for human cells." He goes on to cite an article (I posted it yesterday) entitled "The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?" posted on the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The article reported that two scientists denied that it could have come from the Wuhan Institute which Nicholas Wade, the author of the article, claims is unscientific reasoning, and politically motivated. Wade argued that most scientists won't object because they receive funding from federal agencies.) My reaction: Could it be that this is an example of the "plot thickening", a plot designed and carried out under the direction of our ruling class. Nah, they wouldn't do that! (satire)

Friday, May 14, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, May 14, 2021

Science is supposedly a self-correcting community of experts who constantly check each other’s work. So why didn’t other virologists point out that the Andersen group’s argument was full of absurdly large holes? Perhaps because in today’s universities speech can be very costly. Careers can be destroyed for stepping out of line. Any virologist who challenges the community’s declared view risks having his next grant application turned down by the panel of fellow virologists that advises the government grant distribution agency.

The Daszak and Andersen letters were really political, not scientific, statements, yet were amazingly effective.
  • 💥The Markets Are Rigged by James Corbett from The Corbett Report with audio, video (47:11m) & transcript. This is a best post. My reaction: Corbett keeps on investigating the capitalist Wall Street markets and discovers in this post that the "markets are rigged", with government collusion, by top capitalists who are in control of central banks throughout the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. This discovery might lead him to adopt a Marxist perspective, which will replace his anarchist (agorist--a specific type) ideology, with a self-serving ruling class. But that is verboten in a capitalist society, especially in the heart of a capitalist Empire. So, we will continue on with descriptions of "oligarchic billionaires" who control the stock market for self-serving ends. Corbett will likely not conclude that a ruling capitalist class controls every institution in a capitalist society, that is, that they control media corporations, education, opinion shapers (thesaurus) like Hollywood films, etc.
  • 💥Denying the Demonic by Edward Curtin from his weblog Behind the Curtain. This is a best post. My commentary follows: 
This is a "best post" because Curtin exposes the insight that demons are a part of what it is to be human: "For they are part of ourselves, not alien beings, as the tragedy of human history has shown us time and again." And Curtin ends with a death-bed confession by James Jesus Angleton, who many believe was a sinister "devil" along with his boss Alan Dulles of the CIA. It seems that we are all susceptible to the classic conditioning of Ivan Pavlov, and it appears that power is the irresistible drug that we all occasionally aspire to have. People who designate others as being "evil people" are the latter who find this drug to be irresistible. It may be, and probably is, our "Achilles heel" that now threatens us with extinction as a species, in addition to so many others, on planet Earth--or elsewhere should a few of us manage to migrate to other planets.
 
But, what if a ruling class consists of these people that are sometimes designated as "evil people"? What if these people infest all ruling classes? What if the nature of ruling classes infect all advanced societies? These questions suggest a Marxist perspective which is heavily censored throughout all advanced capitalist societies. What about mixed societies (mixed between privately owned and controlled enterprises and those which the government owns)? I do not know, so I will confine my comments to capitalist societies represented by the leading nations under the control of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire (US, Britain, and Israel)  
Israel sought not only to sustain its military supremacy in the region but also, like any colonial project, to present itself as a superior and more civilized population. The identification of the Palestinians as a primitive and violent rabble in contrast to the sophisticated, cultured and European Israeli society supports this feeling of superiority, while reinforcing the unequivocal link with its European origin and American endorsement. After all, it is these states that finance Israeli military policy. Hence the immanence of the security discourse, which in turn enables the practices of oppression, discrimination and murder by transforming them into practices of defense and revenge.
  • Silencing Supporters Of B.D.S. featuring Max Blumenthal (of The Grayzone) on Jimmy Dore's YouTube channel expressing his views on the subject. (Note: You will need to know what B.D.S. means.)
  • Explained: Strona and Bradshaw 2018 features Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist who has focused on the climate crisis, starting a series on his YouTube channel discussing reports from peer-reviewed websites (this one is from Scientific Reports) published in 2018).

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, May 13, 2021

... when it comes to Western power, I think something more fundamental is taking place than normal biases and differences of opinion. Indeed, it is standard – even when it comes to the most vicious applications of British and American foreign policy – that Western mainstream media simply ghosts pivotal critical content that is staring it right in the face.
 
(Note: You will need to know what "ghosts" (def. #3) mean as used as a transitive verb.) My reaction: Alford doesn't elaborate on his implication of "something more fundamental is taking place than normal biases and differences of opinion". Let me explain what the "something" is: it's blatant censorship.
From the beginning of the twentieth century until 1929, purveyors of record players, radios, sheet music, and musical instruments had made large fortunes and proved useful in forging a culture with which people in the United States could identify. In many ways, the music industry was a nation-building force, which the country’s rulers needed to legitimize and propagate their claims. Now, after almost total collapse during the depression, the industry reestablished itself with new instruments, new sounds, and, above all, a new public attuned to bright lights and the big city.
 
In this context, the revival of folk music—that is, music derived from rural southern sources, unamplified, and, to a large extent, comprised of old songs of anonymous origin—was more than just another fad. Folk music encapsulated longings for an idyllic past, for a time before crass commercialism turned music into a commodity, and for relationships between musicians and audiences that were egalitarian and holistic. Folk music continues to have an appeal for these reasons today. 
 
My reaction: This post provides a real history of a cultural movement that was a threat to the ruling class which decided to launch an empire combining their military dominance with what was left of the British Empire. They smeared this folk music movement as Russian-Communist inspired. These folk musicians were hounded and persecuted by the FBI in an effort to destroy it. This cultural phenomenon flourished in the post-WWII years when the fascist coup began with the use of the atomic bomb in Japan and continued with the McCarthy attacks on anyone who dared to voice opinions different from what the ruling class coup-leaders allowed. But they could not destroy it until the conclusion of the Vietnam War when this folk music movement and their influence also ended. After that, youth devoted themselves to "turning-on and dropping-out" to the Beetles tunes and rock-and-roll music. Now we see the same ruling class, which owns nearly everything and able to censor at will, able to pull-off successfully 9/11, the Iraq invasion, and the current pandemic with its lockdowns, shutting small businesses, and vaccines which hugely profits the pharmaceutical corporations with the latter immune from prosecution when their vaccines harm people. (I added to this reaction at 8:38 PM CT.)

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Dissident [independent] journalists are a problem not only because they have broken free of the controls of  counterparts. Worse, dissident journalists are also educating readers so that they are better equipped to understand what corporate journalism is: that it is ideological prostitution. It is reporting and commentary for hire, by an establishment class. [my insertion]
This post is from an old-fashioned conservative website and looks at the China vs USA competition as a contest between capitalist economies. Worst of all, while imposing punitive sanctions on the rest of the world, USA is losing in the race to develop better products than the China. The sub-headline says it all: "America Makes Aircraft Carriers, China Makes Money". While China seeks to become the dominant economy, USA seeks to threaten the world with its specialization in producing more devastating weapons. 
 
I wish that China develops only products that people all over the world need, not what capitalist corporations seduce people into believing what they need in order to obtain greater profits. The Chinese Communist Party sees that the USA and its Empire is hell-bent on ruling the world for the benefit of corporations, so they must pursue the path that they are on. But can they while pursuing their path avoid creating a capitalist class that takes over control of China and replace the Communist Party? That is the question that vexes me. (Commentary was edited to replace an error in the first paragraph at 6:42 PM CT.)
  • History: Napoleon Between War and Revolution by historian and political scientist Dr. Jacques Pauwels from Global Research. My reaction: This is history written by an accurate historian and not by revisionist historians (def.) who have re-written history to conform with capitalist ideology and the USA representing "good guys".
  • New Report: Cable News Almost Never Covers Climate Change features Lee Camp satirically commenting on the climate crisis reported by media corporations in this 18:16m podcast. My satirical reaction: We wouldn't want to discourage people from shopping for products they don't absolutely need--it might lessen the profits of billionaires!
  • Science Update: Methane Blows features Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist who has focused on the climate crisis, from his YouTube channel (5:56m),

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, May 11, 2021

  • Panel: Why Russia fears another Nazi attack featuring Rick Sanchez of RT asking questions of two Russian experts regarding Russia's celebration of the victory over Nazi Germany. My reaction: They make the point, which I often make, that history of WWII has been largely rewritten for the people located in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Could it be that the Russian people fear another attack by NATO fascist forces that are amassed near the border with Russia?
  • Keep Weapons Out of Space — ‘The New War-Fighting Domain’ by Brian Cloughley from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: Cloughley cites a 1967 agreement to keep weapons out of space signed by all leading nations, but provides evidence that since 1982 US presidents and their military keeps developing space weapons. I suggest you ask American Indians if the USA abides by (def.) their agreements.
  • Escalation In Palestine by Bernhard, a German independent blogger, from his weblog Moon of Alabama. My reaction: There have been many reports of tensions heating up between the Israeli government and the Palestinians and antagonistic Arabs in the region. I wonder what is going on.

The U.S. gave these helicopters, free of charge, to Colombia as part of what’s known as Plan Colombia – a massive military aid package that was ostensibly about fighting drug traffickers, but was really about defeating the leftist FARC counterinsurgency and punishing their base of support among peasants in rural areas.

In 2016, the FARC and government made a peace deal, so aside from a few holdouts, the FARC doesn’t exist.

Meanwhile, there’s more cocaine coming out of Colombia than ever, and the international drug cartels are more powerful than ever.
  
My reaction: Columbia is an integral part of Plan Columbia which was designed to control Venezuela if not all of South America for the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. (See this and this.) I remember in the late 1980s attending in Oregon a report from an independent journalist who spoke of the many atrocities against labor leaders which was ignored by the Colombian government, and the reality of this was well hidden by US corporate media.

Monday, May 10, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, May 10, 2021

  • Google CAUGHT Helping CIA Spy On You featuring Jimmy Dore, normally a comic (def--#3), seriously exposing the CIA, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., the rest of their media corporations and their role in subverting real news coverage in the USA. (Note: "establishment" = the ruling capitalist class.) My reaction: I wish the general population could be as informed about our masters as comics like Dore, Hopkins, and R. Brand are.
  • 💥Propaganda and the Media: Part 1 – Introduction by Larry Romanoff from "The Saker" blog. This is a best post. (Note: You will need to know what "DDoS" means.) My reaction (Revised my reaction at 6:30 AM CT on Tuesday.): This knowledgeable person packs a lot of insights and factual history in this post. I especially found his comments about Chinese news media helpful. I rarely agree 100% with my posts, but I agree with probably 95% of this post. No one person knows everything! That is why we are social animals and depend on each other for the truth, among other important things. However, we are up against a US/Anglo/Zionist Empire that intentionally deceives us. I will provide my differences from Romanoff in future commentaries or reactions.
  • USAID admits to Venezuela regime change fraud featuring Anya Parampil and Red Lines' channel on YouTube revealing a well-kept secret. From The Grayzone. (Note: Because YouTube is playing games with left-wing and independent websites, you will need to watch the video directly on YouTube.)

Sunday, May 9, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday & Sunday, May 8 & 9, 2021

  • Important Update by Whitney Webb from her channel at Rokfin. My reaction: I, too, have been an avid follower of Webb's contributions, and I am sorry to learn of this bad news. I know that we should not rely on one source, but she was a bright light that revealed so much about our reality.
  • Interview w/ Ryan Cristian of The Last American Vagabond by someone who has a channel at Rokfin. My reaction: I can't figure out who the interviewer is, but it is someone who is an ordinary uninformed American who has questions about media corporations and their messages related to the Coalvid-19 pandemic. This "someone" interviews Ryan Cristián, who has done extensive research into the pandemic and who has been censored by major platforms. The ruling class, the controllers of our mainstream culture, have devised a "cancel culture" to convince most Americans to not listen to people who question the details related to the pandemic. The interviewer is not afraid to listen to Cristián who has been a target to not listen to. Cristián patiently explains the sources of his doubts about the coverage of mainstream media. If you are someone who has listened to people like Cristián or have done your own research and have concluded that the "authorities" have no scientific basis for justifying their onerous restrictions on your freedom, then you can very well ignore this article.
  • US Troops Trying to Break Through from Afghanistan into Central Asia by Valery Kulikov from New Eastern Outlook. (Note: The author considers it too expensive for the USA and coalition forces to move their military equipment and supplies back to their home countries. But where will they go? The rest of his analysis is devoted to this question.)
  • Unmasking Myanmar's Racist Genocidal US-backed Opposition by Brian Berletic (formerly "Tony Cartalucci") from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. (Note: To watch the video that the article contains, you may need to reinstall this article. Then select YouTube's source for the video--YouTube is constantly playing games with us. Now it appears that they make it difficult to access their videos contained in articles.) My reaction: Berletic has settled in Thailand after serving in the US Marines. He has devoted himself to uncovering the lies of the US ruling class in that area. We are lucky to have him uncover some of the lies we are told by the ruling class's media corporations. Therefore, we need to support him.