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, August 21, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, August 21, 2021

  • More Americans now say government should take steps to restrict false information online than in 2018 by Amy Mitchell and Mason Walker from Pew Research Center. My reaction: I'm not surprised by the finding of Pew that about 1/2 of Americans believe that censorship is okay. If fact I think it is too low from my observations of people in my area of southern Minnesota. It is a measure of the gullibility or the susceptibility of Americans to ongoing fear propaganda. However, I also think this gullibility has peaked, and its all downhill for the fear propagandists from now on. This observation is not based on data, but my own gut-feeling.
  • Twitter Enables People To Censor EACH OTHER!! featuring Jimmy Dore of the Jimmy Dore Show with Ron Placone interjecting comments (via his YouTube channel--11:01m) reporting and commenting on the latest Tweeter change. My reaction: Dore and Placone use "liberals" in the contemporary sense--meaning propaganda centered around the first 10 amendments of the Bill of Rights amendments of the US Constitution in order to get the existing states to pass the new constitution designed by the slave-owning Founding Fathers which they proceeded to ignore. This meaning is in contrast to the classical meaning, as advocated by the early capitalists in Europe and America, that was a rationale for capitalist ideology. The term "liberal" is still used today by various serious people, but it is often used by agents of propaganda to confuse people when they mean capitalism because the use of the term "liberal" (or its derivatives like "neoliberal") is nicer sounding than capitalism (or some other word--imperialism for example).
In liberal theory, news journalism is a check and balance on the ruling class, but in practice institutions and presses that once held power to account have become part of unaccountable power, and only tough reform and a revolution in the political economy of news can reverse the damage.
 
We entertain the illusion of bipartisanship in the media when both left and right media, both broadsheet and tabloid, are subsumed under the management of cartel conglomerates that dictate op-ed policy and therein modulate the national psyche. 
 
All such "checks" were dispensed with as media corporations became owned and concentrated in a few capitalist hands.
  • Pollinators, the 4 Biggest Threats They Face, and Why You Should Care by Jayne Rising from The Organic Prepper. My reaction: Nothing more illustrates the conflict between capitalism and the web of nature than reports of the decline of pollinators. Agricultural capitalists, like any other capitalists, are in search of short-term profits and thus spray their crops with pesticides--they don't care if they're hazardous for pollinators or humans--in order to produce more and enjoy more profits (and, in some instances, more power to influence and reduce government regulations).
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Friday, August 20, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, August 20, 2021

If immunity wanes, what will happen a year after the third shot? Will there be a fourth shot, and then one every single year after that? Will these be required to update ones “vaccine passport”? As far as a shot every year, that’s where we seem to be heading for those who are willing to do it. We will see what happens.
 
Unfortunately, the science behind natural immunity, which can reduce the severity of disease and even protect against it, has been completely ignored. 
I recently spoke with independent investigative journalist and writer, Cory Morningstar, about matters Covid19 hysteria & propaganda (with a focus on Ontario), the experimental & dangerous so-called "Covid vaccines" & the endless boosters that will follow, the opioid epidemic & Big Pharma's role in it (including the jab makers), and SPARS 2025-2028.
  • Snopes Founder CAUGHT Plagiarizing & Deceiving Readers featuring Jimmy Dore of the Jimmy Dore Show (via his YouTube channel--11:53m) reporting and satirically commenting on the plagiarizing discovery of Snope's fact-checking lauded by the likes of the NY Times and the Washington Post.
  • Afghanistan by Margaret Kimberly from Black Agenda Report. (Note: In this article Kimberly gives a summary of the true history of USA's involvement in Afghanistan during the last 40+ years.)
The Covid fear fog is thinning, people are starting to wake up a little, and the people running things need everyone to be afraid.
America’s war in Afghanistan was just one chapter in a period of presumed unipolar dominance. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington moved quickly to demonstrate geopolitical power with a litany of illegal wars and military interventions. It became known in Neoconservative [Zionist] parlance as “full-spectrum dominance”. We also saw Neoliberal narratives for imperial power under the rubric of “humanitarian wars”. But basically, the underlying rationale was the same: unilateral military force to assert U.S. global hegemony.

The first Gulf War against Iraq came in 1991 followed by the U.S. invasion of Somalia – Operation Restore Hope with its Orwellian rhetoric that set the pattern for many subsequent military escapades. The U.S.-NATO blitzkrieg against former Yugoslavia in 1999, and then other wars for natural resources and regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and ongoing in Syria, among other places.

This is the proper context for the U.S. and NATO occupation of Afghanistan. It is more accurately explained in terms of Washington trying to impose imperial might aided and abetted by Western lackeys [located in the de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire]. [my insertions]
Initial impressions point to increased maturity. The Taliban are granting amnesty to employees of the NATO occupation and won’t interfere with businesses activities. There will be no revenge campaign. Kabul is back in business. There is allegedly no mass hysteria in the capital: that’s been the exclusive domain of Anglo-American mainstream media. The Russian and Chinese embassies remain open for business.
Moderate Rebels live: Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton discuss the US military pullout from Afghanistan with journalist Pepe Escobar, who has extensive experience reporting in the country and was even arrested by the Taliban.

We will talk about the 20-year US/NATO war, opium ratline the CIA used to fund dirty covert ops, fight over geostrategic pipelines, and estimated $1 trillion worth of untapped mineral reserves, as well as Washington's "pivot to Asia" and how Afghanistan is central in the new cold war on China and Russia.
  • Iraq: The Restless Centennial of Statehood by Viktor Mikhin from New Eastern Outlook. (Note: The author gives us a snapshot of the true history of Iraq after the British carved out a territory that became Iraq a century ago.)
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Thursday, August 19, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, August 19, 2021 (Shortened aggregated post.)

The reason for the opposition posed by the Western media, to Biden’s withdrawal, is very simple to break down and is likely due to their donors often belonging to the military industrial complex. The argument that women were somehow safer with the US there is just a fallacy, for one, the reports about the Taliban perhaps prohibiting women from attending schools is yet to be seen. Yet, this is not the main point here, many areas throughout Afghanistan are currently without educational facilities for women and do not allow Afghan girls to get an education.

  • Israel’s Secret Arsenal: It’s Not So Secret Anymore by Philip Giraldi, Ph.D, from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: Why is this such an open secret, but not discussed within the de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire? The most significant answer, among other reasons: It is because Israel is an integral part of the de-facto Empire since 1967.
I guess I remember so much that I shouldn't remember as a "good American" about my country's behavior in the world scene. One memory is that of "Free Tibet" bumper stickers frequently seen on cars of academics in the 1960s when I was attending university. I knew that this was a well-funded campaign to hate China. I remember when the Dalai Lama, the "Pope" of the Tibetan people, came to visit the Seattle area, where I formerly lived. All the public schools took the day off and bused their students to attend his speeches. I knew that this, once again, was a well-funded campaign for the public to hate China.

Many such lies have been told to Americans throughout the years since WWII (the Korean War, the McCarthy period; the assassinations of JFK, his brother Robert, and Black leaders such as Malcolm X; War on Drugs; War on Terrorism; 9/11; the fake justifications of the Iraq War; the invasion of Afghanistan; the gross exaggerated Corona-19 Pandemic that the ruling class caused, etc.) but the American public seems to swallow them whole. I guess that is why they the owners (capitalist investors), continue with lies in their media corporations. But our masters seem to grow bolder, richer, and more powerful with each big lie while ordinary Americans become poorer and delusional.
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