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

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, February 16, 2022

  • The Mind Control Police: The Government’s War on Thought Crimes and Truth-Tellers by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead from The Rutherford Institute. My reaction to their statement: "The U.S. government, which speaks in a language of force, is afraid of its citizenry." It is not the US government, but the capitalist ruling class (the Deep State) that "owns" the government that is the problem. Otherwise, this post is very good.
  • Alex Krainer: The Ukraine Crisis & COVID1984 are the Same Conflict features Krainer in an interview conducted by the unnamed interviewer giving his (Krainer's) views from the website Geopolitics & Empire and their channel on Odysee (10:57) My reaction: Krainer refers often to the "empire" or "Western Empire". This is equivalent to what I declare is a more accurate description--the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire, the latest capitalist empire that emerged after WWII, with the merging of US military might with what was left of the British Empire, and in 1967 adopting Israel and Jewish right-wing wealth to help police the Middle East.
... under prevailing ambitions of US hegemony, for Washington, the expansion of NATO must continue without restriction. Because the aim is intrinsically a hostile design on Russia. As long as Russia seeks to remain an independent global power with an independent vision of economic development as in Eurasian integration with China, then it will be a target for US imperial enmity. In that context, NATO's eastward expansion is all about entrenching hostility towards Russia and keeping European allies under Washington’s economic and military suzerainty.

The problem is not Russia's so-called escalation, as the Western media portray. The root problem stems from the US escalation of military forces over the past three decades against Russia in the form of its NATO instrument growing without relent and putting a blade to Russia's throat. The core issue is American imperial hostility towards Russia and any other perceived global rival.
The US government is not actually worried about Russian propaganda. The US government is worried about people disrupting US propaganda. Every day we’re offered new reasons why it’s important to regulate what online materials are seen by people, from fake news clickbait to Russian propaganda to Covid misinformation to foreign trolls to domestic extremism to election security, and the only thing they all have in common is that the solution is a more tightly regulated internet. At a certain point you can only conclude it is internet regulation itself that they are after, in the same way you’d conclude after a stranger kept offering you different reasons why you should let him hold your wallet that he’s really just after your wallet.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The ability to control the thoughts people think about what’s going on in their world is the only thing standing between the oppressive, exploitative status quo and revolutionary change. The powerful understand this while the general public do not. There is nothing, literally nothing, they wouldn’t be willing to do in order to ensure their control over dominant narratives.
A glaring contradiction in the Kurdish account of the events leading to the jailbreak in al-Hasakah is that if the US claims the ISIS leader remained in operational command via a network of couriers who were closely monitored and their communications intercepted by the CIA, then how is it possible that the fugitive ISIS chief staged a brazen prison break at al-Hasakah, hundreds of miles from his northwestern Idlib hideout, without the knowledge of the US forces tracking him down?
The lines have been drawn. One of two likely outcomes will likely prevail: either Canadians will sacrifice their freedoms and comply with the mandates or the mandates will be repealed and Trudeau will have to step down. 
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