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 LappĆ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, October 9, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, October 9, 2021

Task force chair Jeffrey Sachs, economics professor at Columbia University in New York, told the Wall Street Journal that he had shut down the scientist led investigation into how the COVID-19 pandemic started because of concerns about its links to the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organization run by task force member Peter Daszak.

“A lot is going on around the world that is not properly scrutinized or explained to the public,” Sachs told the newspaper, adding that the task force would broaden its scope to examine transparency and government regulation of risky laboratory research.
One of the worst consequences of converting the federal government to a national-security state has been the stultification or warping of the consciences of the American people. With unwavering allegiance to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, all too many Americans have sacrificed their sense of right and wrong at the altar of “national security,” the two-word term that has become the most important term in the political lexicon of the American people.
The Establishment-linked figure, George Friedman (of Stratfor fame), has outlined America’s new post-Afghan strategy on Polish TV. He said tartly: “When we looked for allies [for a maritime force in the Pacific] on which we could count – they were the British and the Australians. The French weren’t there”.
 
Crooke concludes his essay with these words:

Europe today is caught between a rock and a hard place. Does it possess the energy (and the humility) to look itself in the mirror, and re-position itself diplomatically? It would require altering its address to both Russia and China, in the light of a Realpolitik analysis of its interests and capabilities.
Instead of simply stopping its human rights abuses, the Israeli government has built an extensive and sophisticated public relations network across the West in order to protect itself from criticism.
 
Today, Lowkey speaks to one of the latest victims of that smear campaign, Professor David Miller. A prominent critic of the state of Israel’s policies, Miller was recently sacked from his position as Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol, after a pressure campaign involving Zionist student groups and even members of parliament, who accused him of “inciting hatred against Jewish students.”
  • How to survive our tragedy by Terry Eagleton from Unherd (a British-based website). My reaction: To be clear, I disagree with Eagleton when he writes the following sentences:
... climate change, which nobody ever intended but which is the consequence of billions of individual acts. Nobody ever turned the ignition key in their car or heaped a shovelful of coal on the fire with the idea of wiping out the human race. As Inspector Clouseau might say, no-one is guilty and everyone is guilty.
 
I view the system of capitalism and its powerful socioeconomic ruling class as guilty of the disappearance of humans. If humans had succeeded in establishing participative governance under socialism, we likely would not be where we are now: facing extinction. Under the system of socialism, the concern of scientists about global warming would have been listened to more seriously by socialist governments than by the capitalist ruling classes (with their addiction to profits and power) that have ruled over humanity from the beginning of the industrial civilization.
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Friday, October 8, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, October 8, 2021

You think you’ve got rights? Think again.

All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.

This is the grim reality of life in the American police state.
  • All Our Problems Are Built On Us-Vs-Them Propaganda by Caitlin Johnstone with her American husband, Tim Foley, also reading the script (but you may miss supporting examples, illustrations, etc.)--from her weblog. My reaction: This is propaganda 101, a beginning lesson of propaganda, in which most Americans need to enroll.
When you use the military to eliminate opposition, everyone knows it happened. When you use propaganda to eliminate opposition, people aren’t even aware you did it. They think it was their own idea to suddenly become super concerned about Saddam or Putin or Maduro or whomever or to go along with this or that power-serving agenda. Beyond the hard, concrete realities of war and militarism there’s a whole other war being fought on a far greater scale and of far greater consequence, and most people don’t even know it’s happening: the mass-scale psychological manipulation of the entire human species.
Here is a nice example how the U.S. keeps certain issues in the news and thereby propagandizes its people against its perceived enemies.
 
My reaction: Many ordinary people in the USA seem unaware that they are increasingly being targeted as "enemies".
  • The Anonymous Executioners of the Corporate State by Chris Hedges from Scheer Post. My reaction: In reference to the title, the corporate state, of course, refers to a fascist state according to Mussolini's definition of fascism, the ultimate evolutionary objective of capitalism. So far, the fascist-capitalist state is winning.
... they emphasize that the United States’ and its allies’ overseas military biological activities (over 200 US biological laboratories are deployed outside its national territory, which function in opaque and non-transparent manner) cause serious concerns and questions among the international community over its compliance with the BWC. The two sides share the view that such activities pose serious risks for the national security of the Russian Federation and China, and are detrimental to the security of relevant regions.

The Russian Federation and China further note that the United States’ and its allies’ military biological activities on their national territory also cause serious compliance concerns.
It appears that the de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire is supporting another terrorist army to topple a government in Africa (Ethiopia) that is not to their liking. I previously have known little about the political situation in Ethiopia, but looking further I found a recent, interesting article entitled "Ethiopia: TPLF Terrorism Expands, Civilians Massacred" by Graham Peebles from Dissident Voice. I advise you to read it. 
 
I note that the TPLF is supported by nations of the Empire. My suspicion is that the directors of the Empire are using the TPLF, which in an elaborate post from the corrupted Wikipedia describes it as a left-wing oriented group, as a template (together with other of their terrorist organizations) for crushing the remaining disorganized opposition in the USA. If my suspicion is correct, it may be of more interest to left-wing Americans here in the USA.
  • From Russia Without Love - Mercenaries in Mali by Mark P. Fancher from Black Agenda Report. (Note: The title refers to this sentence: "The prospect of a Russian company with close ties to the Russian government playing a prominent role in Mali has generated extreme panic among western imperialist powers".) My reaction: The extent of knowledge about Africa from the disappearing members of my generation was limited to the Tarzan movies.
  • "IT'S ALRIGHT WHEN THEY DO IT!": Elites Worst Kept Secret Exposed featuring Russel Brand, a British comedian, rather sarcastically commenting on the Pandora Papers which revealed, once again, that the rich are not paying taxes and hiding their income in off-shore bank accounts via his channel on YouTube (15:03). (Note: You might also be interested in another article illustrating how mainstream media is framing this article for its usefulness as propaganda.)
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Thursday, October 7, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, October 7, 2021

1) There doesn't seem to be consensus about the risk/ benefit ratio of the COVID-19 vaccines to for younger age groups, so whey [sic] does there seem to be such certainty in the media? [my corrections]
 
2) If the vaccine trials were solid, why are certain brands of vaccine being put on hold almost a year after the vaccine roll out?
  • Moderna’s free ride by Vincent Kiezebrink from CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt). My reaction: Kiezebrink's points are supported by 75 documents. Regard item number two below, some of their contracts require $22.50 per dose, but they pay costs for production and marketing around $.20 per dose.
Key issues are that: (1) the development of Covid-19 vaccines was heavily subsidised by public funding; (2) current vaccine prices are relatively high compared to costs, and appear set to rise significantly, leading to massive profits for company shareholders paid for largely with public funds; and (3) the large profits that vaccine producer Moderna will make are likely to end up in tax havens Delaware and Switzerland. There is tangible economic injustice involved when taxpayers finance the development of a product, only to have it sold back to them at a hefty margin. The fact that resulting profits end up in tax havens, where they will almost certainly be taxed at a very low rate, if at all, compounds this injustice.
  • Guterres and the Great Reset: How Capitalism Became a Time Bomb by Matthew Ehret from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction to Ehret's statement: "The period of chaos launched in 1971 with the floating of the dollar was never capitalism." Ehret, like Michael Hudson, James Corbett, Ryan CristiĆ”n, and others, was always fond of capitalism when it was smaller, but transnational capitalism (sometimes referred to as "neoliberalism") of today is what Ehret dislikes and tries, in vain, to differentiate it from the smaller, primarily nationally based capitalism. Also, he doesn't see the de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire and its directors, major capitalists, and a relatively few financiers (the Deep State of the Empire), who are doing their utmost to control and dominate the world. Instead, he see these people as corrupting capitalism or causing a deviation from it. What is different about this new advanced version of capitalism? Does it rid itself of the profit motive? No. Does it dispense with private, self-serving ownership (instead of public ownership and control) of productive property? No. How is it radically different? He doesn't have an answer to the last question.
The insistence of native peoples on acquiring a semblance of political influence in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia – countries carved out by criollos after the collapse of the Spanish colonial empire, where descendants of the conquered Incas still constitute the decisive majority of the population – is anathema not just to the local white ruling class but also to its North American protectors.
Their sophistry begins with statement that this NATO backed tribunal is a “peoples’ tribunal. It is not. It is a British-US government propaganda operation. It was not created by a demand from the world’s people but by the CIA-funded World Uyghur Congress. And unlike other international ‘peoples tribunals’ it targets not a country that is attacking another country but accuses a national government of crimes against its own people. The organisers could have called a tribunal about the genocide against the indigenous peoples of Canada, now notorious, and not denied by the Canadian government, which has failed to bring anyone to account. But they are not interested in targeting other NATO allies, only the chosen enemy of the day, China.

They even claim to be cut of the same cloth as the Russell ‘Stockholm’ or Vietnam Tribunal and that when state actors do not act in the face of ‘crimes’ then the ‘people’ must. 
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Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, October 6, 2021

  • Information Dystopia from the Cross Talk Show on RT. (Note: The participants discuss the censorship by Facebook, YouTube, etc.)
  • Picnic Protests Sweep the World! featuring Canadian James Corbett, who lives in Japan, from his website providing information of the "vaccine pandemic" and the mandates that are becoming more onerous. (Note: Corbett's title focuses on the type of protests that are occurring in parts of France, Switzerland, and Italy.) My reaction: But what if the capitalist ruling classes decide to mandate requiring vaccination documents to enter grocery stores? They seem to be desperate to have everyone under their control vaccinated.
  • The Great Barrington Declaration One Year On by Phillip W. Magness and James R. Harrigan from American Institute for Economic Research. My reaction: This article clearly shows how the ruling classes of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire are desperate in their drive to vaccinate everybody under their control.
The ... most pervasive myth regarding smallpox is that the disease was totally eradicated due to vaccination. In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth.
In a system of top-down surveillance capitalism with an increasing section of the population deemed ‘unproductive’ and ‘useless eaters’, notions of individualism, liberal democracy and the ideology of free choice and consumerism are regarded by the elite as ‘unnecessary luxuries’ along with political and civil rights and freedoms.
 
We need only look at the ongoing tyranny in Australia to see where other countries could be heading.
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Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Post that I especially recommend for Tuesday, October 5, 2021 (Only one today because of significant dental work.)

  • šŸ’„The Psychology of Totalitarianism featuring a Prof. Mattias Desmet, University of Ghent Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences addressing (via Bitchute 1:09:21) the Corona Foundation Committee ("Stiftung Corona Ausschuss") made up of mostly German lawyers. This is a best post. (Note: I resist posting articles, videos, podcasts, etc. over one hour, but I think that this post is especially important. I thank a west coast activist for sending me this article.) My brief commentary which differs a little to that of Prof. Desmet follows: 
The new transnational capitalist class that controls the new de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire uses manipulative methods to rule over their populations. In the past, authoritarians used mainly violence against individuals that resisted their domination. But, as I explained in my post entitled "Fake leaders and ineffective movements", starting in 1940 the new imperialists have constructed a new empire out of the merger of the USA with what was left of the British Empire (later in 1967 they added right-wing Jews that founded Israel (with their help) on Palestinian territory). This cabal, which was centered in the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations, was so impressed with the effectiveness of their propaganda during WWI, and the latest psychological advances up to their time like classical conditioning (of Pavlov), that they felt they could establish a new, lasting empire to rule over, or dominate, the rest of the world. Having crushed the outright fascist-capitalist forces in WWII, they embarked to build a new fascist (see my commentary on fascism last Saturday following Caitlin Johnstone's post) empire. (Only the Soviet Union and their followers stood in the way. China came later, and Iran fairly recently.)
 
First, they had to control all social-cultural institutions, and this they accomplished in the period after WWII. The new imperialist incorporated methods of rewriting history, fake news, and fake narratives presented by their media together to create an anti-socialist, capitalist culture as a bulwark against any ideas of publicly owned and controlled economic property.
 
Because the inherent nature of capitalism is to concentrate and consolidate ownership of economic property in a relatively few hands, later they added classical conditioning to their control repertoire. This is where I agree with Prof. Desmet. They used the methods and principles of classical conditioning to gain control over careers, jobs, and grants (for independent contractors) to motivate compliance among the highly trained and educated of their populations (scientists, educators, highly trained technical specialists).
 
These combined methods, which are applied to their populations, are regulated by numbers, that is, by the number of people affected by these methods. Therefore, the directors of this Empire are not bothered by people like me because we influence very few people, whereas their methods influence overwhelming numbers of people. Thus, they can distance themselves from imperialists in the past--familiar to all of us--who used violence to control their populations. And, also this made it possible to pretend to value liberality and respect human rights while pursuing capitalist adventures. As their power and control grow over time or in desperation, they will find the traditional methods of coercive violence, which was used formerly, much simpler and easier to administer.
 
In contrast to the lawyers of the Corona Foundation Committee, I don't know if their legal maneuvers will work or not, but I suspect not. I think our masters are already too powerful. I, in my old age, tend to be pessimistic about the nature of humans. I think humans have already disturbed their habitat on planet Earth sufficiently that we are headed for extinction via global warming and climate destabilization. Hopefully, after many millions or a few billion years, new species will arise that are able to live in peace and less destructive of their environments than our species is.
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Monday, October 4, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, October 4, 2021 (plus a late post.)

The Facts:

Data from the Centres for Disease Control indicates the mortality risk of COVID in children 0-14 years old is less than the seasonal flu, car accidents, and drowning.
 
Children are also extremely unlikely to be hospitalized or have a severe case of COVID-19. The seasonal flu poses a greater risk.
Less than a minute into the above False Flag Weekly News video, Cat McGuire and I start breaking down the Mighty Wurlitzer’s most insane propaganda story of the week. Headlined “New evidence undermines the COVID lab-leak theory — but the press keeps pushing it,” the story, authored by presumed Mockingbird operative Michael Hiltzik, is a textbook case in shameless, undisguised deception and doublespeak.
Jim Freeman is the author of the new book, Rich Thanks to Racism: How the Ultra-Wealthy Profit from Racial Injustice. He’s a civil rights lawyer and the director of the Social Movements Support Lab. He previously worked for the Advancement Project, where he led the Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track Project. Jim recently joined Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson on an episode of the Current Affairs podcast. The following transcript has been lightly edited for grammar and clarity.
  • The role of mercenaries in Afghan disaster by Yves Engler from his weblog. (Note: Engler is identified in his weblog as a "Canadian author and activist". He exposes the role of PSCs (Private Security Companies) from a Canadian perspective in especially Afghanistan which mainstream media, which serves the de-facto US, Anglo, Zionist Empire, has failed to cover. 
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