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, January 29, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, January 29, 2022

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, Congress launched the bicameral, bipartisan Abraham Accords Caucus to support normalization between Israel and Arab states. Backed by pro-Israel groups, this new political development can be interpreted as a way for the Israel lobby to regain its power over a U.S. Congress that is increasingly critical of Israel. 
Journalists Benjamin Norton and Alan MacLeod join Mnar Adley to discuss how the mainstream media spent the last week beating drums of war with Russia over Ukraine with headlines and talking heads funded and sponsored by Lockheed Martin and NATO.

Meanwhile, there wasn’t a single article covering how the US-Saudi-UAE coalition cut off the internet to Yemen for several days while dropping hundreds of bombs on civilians resulting in hundreds dead and over a thousand injured. Guess which story CNN covered? Both conflicts were brought to you by weapons manufacturers.
Consider the possibility that all the Russia hysteria we’ve been fed the last few years was carefully rolled out to manufacture consent for the exact escalations against Russia that we’re seeing today, and all the framing of Russia as the hostile aggressor has been ass backwards.

Let’s not forget after all that this has been fundamentally driven from the beginning by the same intelligence agencies who have an extensive history of lying about exactly this sort of thing.
With these three measures, Russia seeks to further isolate the US from Nato and Europe. In the end, the US will be confronted with one of two options, either agree to trade Nato’s open-door policy for Russian agreement not to deploy into the Western Hemisphere, or force a confrontation that will result in a Russian invasion of Ukraine that is seen by Europe as being the fault of the US.

The chess pieces are already being moved. While the US may not see it, a Russian checkmate can be predicted sooner, rather than later.
All those people in the West who thought they could ignore Russia’s interests are starting to suspect that they don’t have the leverage they thought they had. Russia is pretty sanctions-proof. It is the closest thing to an economic autarky on the planet: lots of territory, lots of raw materials, lots of water, lots of energy, all the manufacturing it needs, self-sufficient in food, well-educated people, backed up government, armed to the teeth. It’s pretty impregnable and it’s not run by fools. And it’s very closely allied to the biggest manufacturing power and population in the world. Not an easy target at all and almost impossible to hurt without hurting yourself more.

And all this to preserve the so-called right of a country no one wants in NATO to ask to be admitted. What a principle to die for!  
WATCH THE FULL MOVIE AT: https://youtu.be/11RwCm_OaGc [1:29:46]
 
Directed by Dylan Avery and produced by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, “The Unspeakable” follows four families in their ongoing struggle to find the truth about the murder of their loved ones on September 11, 2001.

This is an extended interview with one of the film’s four protagonists, architect Bill Brinnier, who lost his best friend Frank De Martini on 9/11. De Martini was the World Trade Center construction manager on 9/11 and was responsible for saving the lives of at least 50 people that morning. Brinnier has been actively advocating for a new 9/11 investigation since 2007.
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