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

Thursday, January 6, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, January 6, 2022

  • Which Was Washed More? by Allen Forrest from Dissident Voice. (Note: He offers a cartoon to express what he thinks.)
The overriding factor is the financial incentives of offering money, as is true for hospitals in the USA, as a reward for attributing the cause of death to Covid-19. 
 
I recall my experience in Wisconsin as a Rehabilitation Counselor. I had transferred from California where I did the same work. But the Wisconsin bureaucratic officers were greatly motivated by the "rehabilitation closures" (meaning that clients benefited from our services to achieve employment) they could report in order to justify their next year's appeal for extra funds. Whereas in California the bureaucratic overseers, under the Reagan governorship, had slashed funds for rehabilitation, the Wisconsin counterparts were motivated by more money related to "rehabilitation closures". 
 
Thus, the typical closure had "unpaid family worker" (or some such fake closure) that theoretically described a person who as a result of our services had resulted in another family member obtaining employment. Anyone who walked through our doors in Wisconsin ended up as a "rehabilitation closure"--and the pressures on us counselors were enormous to obtain such closures. (I finally left this career for which I had long prepared.)
 
This policy was justified with an explanation that they were used to acquire more funds to do our work. I became aware that 1/2 of my time was devoted to fake "closures" as real work to help a person with some kind of disability. The raising of funds was the primary reward for our work in Wisconsin, which resulted in Wisconsin having high rates of "closures". And, the same is true for diagnosing someone with covid. The inadequate PCR test also contributes to the excessive rates of covid in USA.
 
The ruling class has taken advantage of the complicated nature of attributing any one cause for death in order to have high rates of Covid-19. They knew that the US population has, in general, poor health by consuming "fast foods", inadequate exercise, poor public health arrangements, and American lifestyles. Medical practitioners and specialists who criticize these policies and methods are threatened with loss of licenses to practice, terminated, or threatened with shortened career opportunities. Those who comply are rewarded with career advancement, and most do.
 
Since then, I've discovered that most state services of rehabilitation have been privatized and taken control of by insurance companies.
British scholar Susan Williams has spent years documenting these and other instances of the United States’ secret operations during the early years of African independence. The resulting book, White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, may be the most thorough investigation to date of CIA involvement in Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Over more than 500 pages, Williams counters the lies, deceptions, and pleas of innocence perpetuated by the CIA and other US agencies to reveal a government that never let its failure to grasp the motivations of Africa’s leaders stop it from intervening, often violently, to undermine or overthrow them.
  • Steppe on Fire: Kazakhstan’s Color Revolution by Pepe Escobar from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: I regard Escobar as the world's top journalist. After he describes what he knows about Kazakhstan from his visit there in 2019 and from his contacts there, he continues:
Now compare it to what I learned from two different, high-ranking intel sources.

The first source was explicit: the whole Kazakh adventure is being sponsored by MI6 to create a new Maidan right before the Russia/US-NATO talks in Geneva and Brussels next week, to prevent any kind of agreement. Significantly, the “rebels” maintained their national coordination even after the internet was disconnected.

The second source is more nuanced: the usual suspects are trying to force Russia to back down against the collective West by creating a major distraction in their Eastern front, as part of a rolling strategy of chaos all along Russia’s borders. That may be a clever diversionary tactic, but Russian military intel is watching. Closely. And for the sake of the usual suspects, this better may not be interpreted – ominously – was a war provocation.
  • Science Update: New England Heating Up! featuring the views and analysis of Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson while focusing on climate data for the states in New England (via his YouTube channel--11:17). He is an independent scientist, who has fearlessly focused his attention throughout much of his career on the climate crisis.
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