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, November 13, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, November 13, 2021

How obvious does it have to be before even insouciant Americans realize that there is something seriously wrong about the Covid vaccination program?
 
One would think we are already past that point even for the mentally-challenged.
  • Media Loses Their Collective Minds Over Aaron Rodgers posted by Ben Swann from Sovren. My reaction: The billionaire's media are losing their collective minds regarding Rogers because they realize that sports (for profits) have always been a major way of distracting the public from the crimes of the ruling capitalist class, but now a major sports star has been caught up in this drama.
Because we are now seeing the effects of global warming which is putting the capitalist system in direct conflict with the ecological demands of nature, we are seeing geopolitical analysts and others attributing a conspiracy to the frantic cutbacks by major capitalists. I'm thinking of Engdahl, Michel Chossudovsky (I assume so, but he hasn't written much recently critical of global warming activists), and Mark Crispin Miller who are leading the charge against global warming from the left. They, like all old-fashioned capitalists, are seeing the basic conflict play out, that is, the basic conflict between capitalism and a sustainable planet, but are caught up in their basic loyalty to capitalism after so many years of capitalist indoctrination. 
 
This basic conflict will also affect leaders of mixed economies (China and Russia) who have learned that the only way to preserve their independence from the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire is to add capitalist practices to existing socialist components in order to out-produce and out-develop technologies of the capitalist economies of the Empire in order to survive. But, they too, will also be caught up in the confusion of this basic conflict.
 
We will also see others caught up in the confusion of this contradiction as the capitalist ruling classes try desperately to resolve this basic conflict. This confusion will also test younger loyal capitalist critics of global warming such as James Corbett, old-fashioned capitalists like Ron Unz, and Prime Minister Morrison of Australia. We will see billionaires, whose capitalist system have brought them extreme wealth and overwhelming power, desperately trying to flee the Earth as the obvious signs of destabilization of the climate become manifest: rising seas flooding major cities, inadequate supplies of food, increasing frequency of wildfires, extreme weather, etc.
 
I, after decades of following scientists, believe it is too late to save the Earth's habitat for humans and most other species.
  • Fake ‘Shoplifting Surge’ is the Just Latest in Crime Wave Propaganda by Eugene Puryear from Breakthrough News (Note: I am posting this website because its original origin from Punchout is carried on Itunes software which you may not have.) My reaction: I don't know what the actual crime statistics are, but there has been much hype about crime in the Minneapolis area (I live in southern Minnesota). I suspect that this has much to do with protecting police forces in the USA. For example, in Minneapolis, the result of the elections has rejected the establishment of a "public health approach to the delivery of functions by the Department of Public Safety (see"City Question 2 – Department of Public Safety"). On the other hand, I have a suspicion that desperation, which has affected largely working people since the pandemic, might be causing the elevating crime stats that have been so emphasized in media reports.
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Friday, November 12, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, November12, 2021

There is a growing need for a real alternative to existing arrangements. The current situation is untenable at all levels. More and more people are rejecting the rich and their cartel political parties and demanding real solutions to the problems confronting the economy and society. Acting in the old way simply won’t work and doesn’t work anymore. People are disgusted with irresponsible and unaccountable leaders who can’t solve any problems. People are also tired of being reduced to vote banks for the parties of the rich. Constantly begging politicians to do the most basic simple things is humiliating, exhausting, and a massive drain on social energy that could be harnessed to expedite human-centered arrangements.
Why do Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela pose such an existential threat to the U.S.? Why are they able to unite all the wings of the democrat party and the republican party against them? It boils down to two factors. First, the power of their example in attempting to build independent, self-determining projects that center the material needs and interests of the people over those of capital. Second, the class warfare politics of the U.S. state.
  • The nature of neoliberalism and its consequences. This post features Chris Hodges conducting an interview with Professor Wendy Brown, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University. using RT's channel on YouTube (25:19). My reaction: Prof. Brown seems to miss the fact that capitalism naturally evolves into anti-democratic fascist governments as the capitalist ruling class, that consolidates and concentrates wealth and power, feels increasingly threatened by ordinary people. Thus, she criticizes neoliberalism and the economic slide of lower classes, but seems, like many dissidents, to accept earlier forms of capitalism, as does Hodges.
How is the economy working for you? We are told this is the time of the Great Reset and Build Back Better. What does that mean to you? How the does the Green New Deal play into this? It seems the rich are only getting richer. What about the rest of us? [my edit]

CrossTalking with Jeffrey Tucker, Joti Brar, and Tony Ewing.
Time and time again we see banks launch voluntary climate initiatives which seem to be aimed purely at reaping PR benefits now, while postponing all concrete action as far into the future as possible.
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Thursday, November 11, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, November11, 2021

I don't usually post articles from right-wing media corporations; but because the ruling capitalist class has switched from backing the right-wing political party to confuse their subjects (US citizens) from the Republican to the Democratic parties, I feel justified in posting this article. The ruling class changed their backing--of the two political parties that they allow to dominate elections--because they have so ruined any weak tendency for the Democratic Party to back issues favoring the working class and they felt safe to do so. 
 
And it worked! The ruling class has so confused the Democratic electorate, which traditionally supported civil rights and workers, but now supports the dictatorial measures against working people. Furthermore, to add to the confusion, they have also supported the spread of fake ideologies such as critical race theory and "woke" policies via their corporate media.
 
Whether the highly exaggerated and poorly managed pandemic is over is a moot question that will be decided in the future.
This time the corporate faction of the Democratic party deployed the Black political class and its media acolytes to neutralize the rising cry for social democracy and anti-capitalist politics.

What we are seeing is the failure of Democrats’ cynical post Obama strategy of focusing on racial grievance discourse divorced from materialist policy. That strategy was supposed to both shut down the possibility of any social democracy, or Sanders-type politics that would benefit most Black people, while secondly using Blacks as crash test dummies to fight Trump. That strategy has blown up in the Democrats face and is doing nothing but feeding the reactionary right.
 
My reaction: Although he clearly touts social democracy (capitalism with a comprehensive welfare system), he clearly sees through the fake progressives in the Democratic Party for what they are. Can I conclude that most African-American people see this as the usual fakery from the ruling class? Maybe, but I have doubts. I only wish that he and the Black Agenda Report also would see through the fakery of social democracy as the solution to the natural tendency of capitalism to turn into fascism where you won't "own", i.e., control anything (including your lives), but "you will be happy".
... a profound dilemma is visible from the momentum of this movement: a large bulk of liberal politics is driven by precisely the opposite impulses. The most loyal Democratic partisans are frequently venerating prosecutors, advocating for harsh criminal punishments, championing punitive theories of criminal law that have long been rejected by liberal jurists and, above all else, often demanding the longest and harshest punishments in "the carceral state” for a large group of people.

Why are so many Democrats simultaneously chanting radical criminal reform slogans to abolish or greatly reduce the police and the prison state while simultaneously demanding harsh prison terms for so many people under the classic law-and-order ideology they claim to oppose?
 
My reaction: There won't ever be police reform under the capitalist system with the ruling class exploiting those below them, and is worst the farther you go below them. In addition, the ruling class depends on police forces to enforce their interests. Police forces protect the safety of the ruling class, not ordinary people.
  • The Great Resignation from RT's channel on YouTube (00:59). My reaction: Under capitalism, the "owner" can purchase Robots and realize profits from their use. Working people like scientists and technicians built these robots to replace you.
I think the statement introducing this essay is "spot-on": "Bloomberg CIA Apologia Accidentally Vindicates China’s Strict Domestic Policies". 
 
But it does more. It reveals what their response is to this failure to wreck harm on China. The ruling class's directors want greater results from their "intelligence" agencies, and they are willing to spend money to get greater results as is indicated by this paragraph from the Bloomberg article:
 
Some of the people interviewed by Bloomberg said that such announcements are more symbolic than substantive and need to be backed up by increases in spending and staffing to have credibility.
 
I agree with her statement near the end of the essay which states: 
 
So Beijing’s anti-corruption crackdowns, widespread surveillance and strict control over Chinese society is making it harder for the CIA to undermine that nation, and now the CIA is expressing its frustration through the billionaire media. Which shows that China is acting entirely in self-defense when it implements these policies.
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Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, November10, 2021

  • What Is France Hiding in the Sahel? by Clinton Nzala from Mint Press News (based in Minneapolis). My reaction: I hesitated to post this article because Americans tend to ignore events in other countries. They do not see these events as related to their own issues and lives. But the latter definitely are related because the transnational ruling capitalist class is in control of the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire, and as such, they oppress, exploit, and fool Americans as they do to people in other unfriendly or third-world nations. In this report we see that France sponsors terrorists while opposing Russia's help to fight against these terrorists. There is little doubt Americans have been, and are, experiencing ruling class terrorist-sponsored organizations (FBI, CIA, and other so-called secretive "intelligence" organizations) here in the USA. The ruling class uses these organizations to spread fear, and fear is only one primary weapon (ignorance is another one) used against working people.
  • 140 Degree Days Are Coming featuring Eugene Puryear in a podcast (11:26) reporting on a study from the journal Nature and two other topics from Breakthrough News.
  • Pfizer Whistleblower Exposes Compromised Vaccine Trial Research featuring Jimmy Dore from his channel on YouTube (16:44) mainly reads a report from the British Medical Journal citing many errors in the research done by Pfizer on their Covid vaccine. Dore also reads reports from other sources that are contrary, or raise questions, to what Fauci, corporate media, and other medical authorities advise. 
Philanthropies incubate and fund campaign groups and NGOs to serve particular narratives. Talking points embedded with fallacious logic are easily passed on and bolstered by access to market reach and attention metrics. Greta, AOC and XR are the three most significant examples of high-reach climate warriors. All three share a blind spot that has been crucial to controlling the narratives about what climate action should look like – they all completely ignored the output of the IPCC Working Group 3 (WG3) on mitigation.
  • Monday~Anomalies by John Allen from his weblog on Medium ($5 subscription required). 
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Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, November 9, 2021

  • Losing Militarily & Strategically, in Order to ‘Win’ Politically (but Ephemerally) by Alastair Crooke, a British political analyst, from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: Crooke focuses on three current emphases that the US foreign policies are currently pursuing: Taiwan, Israel's plan to harass Iran, and US support for Ukraine's harassment of the breakaway and Russian-speaking Donbass. He concludes with this paragraph:
Success stories are needed in the wake of the Kabul withdrawal débacle, and this Administration is in a tearing hurry to give Biden the semblance of foreign policy success. Yet, the combined weight of such fragile, unfinished and strategically disconnected ‘successes’ will at some point badly rebound, in ways exceeding what a dysfunctional U.S. system can bear. 
 
My reaction: I think that the transnational ruling capitalist class of the Empire has passed its apogee to world domination, and I see in the future a slow decline in the power of this de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire. But that won't keep the ruling class from engaging in fantasies like the Great Reset, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and vacating the spoiled Earth to migrate to other planets. Hopefully in the meantime, they won't harass these nations enough to provoke a major war-conflagration.
If only the American people tried to find the time to read books! The ruling class doesn't yet censor such books, but they make them harder to find. The latest book in this category is what this article refers to. I'm referring to "husband and wife duo of Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, authors of a new memoir which illuminates the real story of Afghanistan, were two such journalists who learned just how the sausage is made in the nation’s capital with the connivance of the yellow press." The book is entitled The Valediction: Three Nights of Desmond.
 
However, Parry gives you so much more. If you read this article, it can give you a picture of how policies are made, and have been made, in contrast to how corporate media reports them. Parry, a retired investigative journalist currently living in Germany, expands on the book to leave a coherent picture of the last 50 years of US involvement in Afghanistan and beyond.
 
I've wondered if Max Parry is related to Robert Parry, also an investigative journalist and editor of the Consortium News until his recent death.
  • A Look Back At Russiagate by Bernhard, a German independent blogger, from his weblog Moon of Alabama. My reaction: This is a glaring piece of evidence that US major media corporations are not in the business to inform you, but to fool you.
Meanwhile the deep state actors who had pushed Russiagate all ended up in lucrative positions at CNN and elsewhere. The 'journalists' who ran the fake stories got promoted.

Those who had been right were given no recognition.
Robin Aitken says there is an “acceptable and polite” view of world events which is dominated by media liberals. The former BBC employee warns that we must all be wary of the “hidden persuaders” that operate in all forms of news. 
 
My reaction: Aitken means when he says "media liberals" that the ruling transnational capitalist class has taken control of all major media corporations in the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire. He essentially means that younger journalists employed by the BBC (and all other major media corporations in the Empire) should keep their mouths shut if they want to get ahead in major media. 
Some of the world's largest chipmakers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have responded to a contentious US government request to submit chip data ahead of the Monday deadline, in a move described by industry observers as yet another instance of US hegemony that coerces global semiconductor supply chains to bow to arbitrary requirements way beyond commercial standards.

The information request, seen as a possible maneuver to target China, a thorn in the flesh for US desire for chip leadership, could create more problems than it solves, analysts said, noting that the affected businesses can resort to legal action in case of damage caused.
 
Later the article reads:
 
The request, unveiled by the US Commerce Department in late September, smacks of an attempt to contain China's tech rise under the disguise of addressing chip shortages, according to industry insiders.
Just once it would be great to hear widespread discussion of US election rigging in the same alarmed tone we hear mass media concern trolls talking about nations like Nicaragua, Bolivia or Venezuela. ....

Whenever I raise this point I get people saying “Well the US doesn’t imprison its political opposition leaders like other tyrannical countries!” That’s only because the US doesn’t have any political opposition leaders. There are no politicians in America with any political purchase [purpose] who oppose the ruling power structure in any meaningful way. All true opposition has been quashed; .... [my insertion for typo error]
  • The Truth About COP 26 featuring Lee Camp, using his channel on YouTube (04:28), trying to make humor out of the capitalist meetings of COP 26.
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Monday, November 8, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, November 8, 2021

Dr Peter Doshi, associate editor of the British Medical Journal(BMJ), discusses the total lack of scientific process behind the development and roll out Covid vaccines in a meeting called by Senator Ron Johnson on the topic of vaccine mandates.

Peter Doshi is an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research in the School of Pharmacy and associate editor at The BMJ. His research focuses on policies related to drug safety and effectiveness evaluation in the context of regulation, evidence-based medicine, and debates over access to data.
What else can you expect of "news" from the ruling capitalist class and their media corporations? 
 
I spent nearly 30 minutes trying to ascertain the ownership of NBC which is theoretically owned by Comcast. I couldn't remember the name of Tegna Inc. which owns the NBC affiliates, but I finally discovered it on my own website using search engines. (You may have glanced at the black and white notice following many of their programs on NBC affiliated stations.) It was conveniently located near the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA, but has moved further down the road to Tyson, VA (you will see Langley in the right corner).
 
You can see the complicated picture of how the ruling class and their major corporations manage to hide their concentration of ownership/control of media.
  • Young Voters Done With Biden & Democrats featuring Jimmy Dore commenting on some news from his channel on YouTube (11:33). My reaction: Dore argues for a new party forgetting once again that the ruling capitalist class has an iron hold on US elections. The chances that a new political party can challenge the established two parties is infinitesimal.
Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock discusses CSIS's (Center for Strategic and International Studies) links to the CIA, as well as how it's managed to shape public opinion and foreign policy with regard to the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]. CSIS is an influential think tank that produces reports on the DPRK and China and is funded by military contractors like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, as well as the governments of the US, Japan, and UAE. [my insertion]

To listen to the full episode, subscribe at: http://www.patreon.com/radiofreeamanda
  • COP26: Emitters Sue To Chill Climate Measures by Manuel Pérez-Rocha from Consortium News. (Note: I tried and failed to access this article on Inequality, the original source as I always do, so I had to post it from Consortium News.)
  • NATO Malign Influence Corrupting Serbian Academe by Stephen Karganovic from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: Dr. Miloš Ković, a faculty member in the history department at Belgrade, Serbia, simply opposes the NATO-sponsored re-writing of history. 
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