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

Friday, January 7, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, January 7, 2022

Is there anything you can or should do if you are facing a vaccine mandate as a condition of attending school or keeping a job? Yes. Absolutely, there is.
  • The CIA’s War on Democracy: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Edward J. Curtin, Jr. Converse by Edward Curtin features a video of this interview (34:44) from his weblog Behind the Curtain. My reaction: Both Kennedy and Curtin are supporters of the capitalist system, a system which pretends to offer a democracy for the public instead of the control and dominance of capitalist class rule. But I think both (along with Glenn Greenwald--and JFK) are honest regarding their political views.
That the January 6 riot was some sort of serious attempted insurrection or "coup” was laughable from the start, and has become even more preposterous with the passage of time and the emergence of more facts. The United States is the most armed, militarized and powerful regime in the history of humanity. The idea that a thousand or so Trump supporters, largely composed of Gen X and Boomers, who had been locked in their homes during a pandemic — three of whom were so physically infirm that they dropped dead from the stress — posed anything approaching a serious threat to “overthrow” the federal government of the United States of America is such a self-evidently ludicrous assertion that any healthy political culture would instantly expel someone suggesting it with a straight face.
  • A year later, what are the lessons from the Trump-backed insurrection of January 6? from Peoples Dispatch. (Note: In this post Monica Cruz interviews Brian Becker, a prominent left-wing activist, who attempts to assess what happened on Jan. 6 of last year.) My reaction: Although he doesn't offer new evidence, he reviews the known events surrounding the alleged "attack on the Capitol" on January 6, 2021 that were characterized by feeble attempts of the FBI and the Capitol guards to prepare for this demonstration, and he concludes that this was a public relations stunt engineered by the Democratic Party to prepare for the next elections.)
So I think that the Democratic Party is grandstanding by looking like they’re big and strong against Trump when, in fact, what they’re doing is the opposite. He is not facing criminal charges. As for the other charges, the contempt charges in Congress will be in fact the political rallying cry for Steve Bannon and the other parts of the Trump entourage. So again, it’s performance theater by the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, it is using these events so that people can send millions and millions to the Democrats as they prepare for the next round of elections. And you also have Trump using the allegation of election fraud to raise lots of money – hundreds of millions of dollars.

So it doesn’t appear to be serious because it’s not serious.
 
Becker then goes on to argue that fascists events characterized what was going on in all Western nations in the 1930s when their populations were suffering from the Great Depression which corresponds to my analysis based on readings of reliable historians and examination of writings during that time.
 
The promotion of the scandalous nature of the event by the Democratic Party represents punishment for that part of the populace who voted for Trump, another capitalist politician, in 2016 in opposition to the ruling class's chosen candidate Hillary Clinton. The ruling capitalist class has chosen the Democratic Party as a vehicle for the execution of their agenda to confuse workers and civil libertarians in their belief that the Party represents them instead of the ruling capitalist class.
  • The Truth About China in Africa features Danny Haiphong and his views about China in an interview conducted by Naomi Karavani using Redacted Tonight's channel on YouTube.
Naomi Karavani interviews journalist Danny Haiphong for a look at modern China, the propaganda being deployed against it by the US empire, and the reality contrasting that propaganda. Haiphong’s journalism is published on his “Chronicles of Haiphong” Substack. There are many lies being spread about China across the West and they’re shading the world’s understanding of what’s happening in the world’s most populous country. Haiphong explains how the Belt and Road Initiative really works, the new Cold War being developed by the NATO powers, and much more.  
  • What Kazakhstan Isn’t by Craig Murray, an independent blogger from Scotland, from his weblog. (Note: I am posting this article in an effort to present another view from an independent blogger of recent events in Kazakhstan.) My reaction: I'm still not convinced that subversive agents of the CIA are not involved. But, we will soon see.
The narrative on the right is that Putin is looking to annex Kazakhstan, or at least the majority ethnic Russian areas in the north. This is utter nonsense.

The narrative on the left is that the CIA is attempting to instigate another colour revolution and put a puppet regime into Nur-Sultan (as the capital is called this week). This also is utter nonsense.
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