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

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Jim Kavanagh & Ed Curtin discuss their fellow high school alumnus, Anthony Fauci, and the confusions, contradictions, and harms of the coronavirus policies he has promoted.
Dr. Roger Hodkinson is Canada's mandate-free MD, and has been a staunch activist in the fight for our freedoms. Roger shares a powerful message, and a poem by a fellow freedom-loving physician.
Canadian pathologist, Dr. Roger Hodkinson, shares how the suppression of safe and effective early treatments could have prevented half a million deaths in the US. Expresses why he is "mad as hell" that doctors have been blocked from treat….
 
My reaction: This claim was based on data that assumed co-morbidities in addition to influenza classified as Covid-19. Influenza almost disappeared from the data. PCR test to detect Covid-19 was grossly inappropriate according to the inventor of this test, Kary Mullis, who conveniently died last year. Overall, the data show the rising number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 only slightly exceeded average years prior to last year. The data indicate that a "pandemic" was not justified.
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks about new lies being spread about Joe Rogan, ”The View’s” Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust comment scandal, the freedom convoy blocking the US Canada border, and Press Secretary Jen Psaki dismissing rising crime concerns. First, Dave shares a clip from “CBS Mornings” where the hosts try to directly connect deaths from COVID to Joe Rogan’s podcast being on Spotify. Neil Young may have started the most recent attacks on the Joe Rogan Experience, but now there is a relentless movement to censor him from all mainstream media outlets. Next, Whoopi Goldberg created her own scandal with her claims on “The View” that the Holocaust had nothing to do with race. She then went on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” to explain her comments, but she might have made matters even worse with her apology. Whoopi is now being accused of antisemitism by some. Will she end up canceling herself? The freedom convoy is causing more headaches for Justin Trudeau. The truckers of the freedom convoy have now formed a trucker blockade at the Alberta border crossing to protest vaccine mandates. Will Justin Trudeau give in to their demands? Finally, a clip of Press Secretary Jen Psaki being asked about voters' concerns about the spike in violent crime across the nation. Instead of addressing the reasons for the rising crime rates she dismissed the concerns by simply reading a list of what Joe Biden is doing about gun control.
What would a completely unscrupulous chief executive whose sole purpose in life is to seize power and never relinquish it do to conceal his evil intentions? He or she would use deception to change the narrative. Many are beginning to recognize that that is precisely what the Democrats are doing and their game plan includes demonizing both Russia and China to create plausible external enemies while also generating fear and uncertainty around alleged domestic threats as well as the COVID menace, to include initiating mandates designed to make the people submissive and fearful of legal and personal consequences for defying the government. Well, be that as it may, the penny has finally dropped and it is now clear that Biden-Pelosi-Schumer are intent on changing the rules and using lawfare and other tools to create a permanent governing majority.

The key to power in this case has been exploiting the legal system to criminalize many forms of dissent. 
  • Let’s Back Up A Sec And Ask Why Free Speech Actually Matters by Australian Caitlin Johnstone with her American husband, Tim Foley, also reading the script (but you must register with one of the hi-tech platforms, and you may miss supporting examples, illustrations, etc.)--from her weblog. (Note: You will need to know what "DM" means.)
It doesn’t matter what you’re free to say if nobody hears you say it. If those who support the status quo are loudly amplified on all media while those who oppose it are denied access to mainstream audiences and algorithmically censored, dissenting views have no effect. They might as well not exist. An environment where everyone has “free speech” but only those who support the status quo get heard is functionally indistinguishable from an environment where no one has free speech and only authorized state propaganda gets heard.

Which is of course the idea
[regarding censorship]. [my insertion]

But, in the USA, the conservative-fascist Supreme Court will rule on free speech that it is permissible to censor speech if the states do not have laws explicitly banning it, and, in any case, private companies are permitted to censor speech. (cynical observation or reality?) The Supreme Court similarly ruled regarding requiring workers of privately owned businesses, as a mandatory condition of employment, to be vaccinated or "tested" regularly.
In a recent interview with US media, Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang said that if the Taiwan island authority, emboldened by the US, keeps going down the road for independence, it would most likely involve China and the US "in a military conflict." He also compared the Taiwan question to "the biggest tinderbox" between China and the US.

The ambassador's words sent shockwaves to the US. US media believe this is a rare and direct warning from Chinese mainland to the US and Taiwan. 
  • President JFK’s Murder Is Graphic Proof of Entrenched Cold War Ideology and Why Peace Eludes U.S.-Russia Relations by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: In 1940 the instigators of this Cold War (& threatens to be hot) are the very characters in the State Department and the very private Council of Foreign Relations together hatched a long-range coupe to take over the government and establish an Empire capable of dominating the world. Read a summary provided by me and/or read a recently published book by Columbia Professor Stephen Wertheim entitled Tomorrow the World. I think that the descendants of this maniacal billionaire group are hell-bent on achieving this goal of world domination today because they are worried about abrupt climate change. Cunningham provides an interview with Martin Schotz which adds perspective on this coup back in Kennedy's day:
In the following interview, Martin Schotz, a respected Massachusetts-based author on the assassination of President John F Kennedy, explores the systematic basis for Cold War logic. He contends that the United States’ political class is locked in an entrenched Cold War mentality that serves its hyper-militarized economy. Cold War politics necessitates conflict and war in international relations, which is all too clearly demonstrated by the present crisis over Ukraine between the U.S. and Russia.

The depth of this Cold War logic of the accompanying national security state is illustrated by the shocking murder of President John F Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. His murderers and the institutional coverup that followed were motivated by Kennedy’s growing opposition to the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The fact of JFK’s murder and the systematic denial by media is an indication of how deeply engrained Cold War thinking is in the American political establishment.

In addition to the US-NATO military investments in Ukraine, there is the $10 billion plan being implemented by Erik Prince, founder of the private US military company Blackwater, now renamed Academy, which has been supplying mercenaries to the CIA, Pentagon and State Department for covert operations (including torture and assassinations), earning billions of dollars. Erik Prince’s plan, revealed by a Time magazine investigation, is to create a private army in Ukraine through a partnership between the Lancaster 6 company, with which Prince has supplied mercenaries in the Middle East and Africa, and the main Ukrainian intelligence office controlled by the CIA. It is not known, of course, what would be the tasks of the private army created in Ukraine by the founder of Blackwater, certainly with funding from the CIA. However, it can be expected that it would conduct covert operations in Europe, Russia and other regions from its base in Ukraine.

Against this background, it is particularly alarming that the Russian Defense Minister Shoigu denounced that in the Donetsk region there are “private US military companies that are preparing a provocation with the use of unknown chemicals”.