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, February 24, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, February 24, 2022

Covid, as has become increasingly obvious is the greatest crime ever imposed on the people on such a global scale. With few exceptions it has affected everybody, everywhere. The mass awakening it has inspired has led to mass uprisings around the globe. Which at the time of writing show no signs of abating, in fact they are growing. As more information about the Pandemic emerges the worse it gets as the depth of the evil is further exposed. It is fair to assume as more details continue to come out, those still accepting the lie will join the already awakened in anger.

What the Covid tyranny has exposed is the total corruption of not just the political class but of all the institutions of power and control.
  • So This Is How Pfizer Did It featuring Russell Brand, a British comedian turned activist, reviews many reports indicating the Pfizer made huge profits from the selling of their vaccines to various governments--using Brand's channel on YouTube (14:11).  
Since countries of the South became independent, the World Bank, the IMF, the Paris Club, the ruling classes in the North and in the South have claimed that a country of the South that aspires at economic progress has to both get into debt and open its domestic market to foreign goods and investments. The same actors claim that countries of the South that have commodity resources must exploit and export them. This dogmatic approach that rests on the threefold diktat debt, the maximal opening of the economies and extractivism keeps those countries in a position of dependence, subordination, under-development and permanent indebtedness. The overwhelming majority of people in those countries live precarious lives at best or in the starkest poverty.

The debt contracted by most governments is used to fund projects and policies that actually increase the country’s dependence and eventually fail. 
  • 'Kiev's govt literally has no cards to play' - Scott Ritter on Donbass escalation featuring Ritter in an interview conducted by an employee of RT using RT's channel on YouTube (07:33). (Note: The RT interviewer references a "Swiss Banking System" which is one method of processing international payments, but the SWIFT international payments system is a dominant system that most corporations and governments rely on to settle payments.)
  • Western sanctions won’t help solve Ukraine crisis: FM by Yang Sheng and Xie Jun from Global Times. My reaction: Because the Global Times is reputedly the voice of the Communist Party that decides all things in China, I see the following quote which contains a veiled threat to the Empire's SWIFT system of international payments:
Chinese analysts said that Russia seemed well prepared for Western sanctions before Russian President Vladimir Putin signed on Monday two decrees recognizing "the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR)" and "the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR)" as independent and sovereign states. As Russia has huge energy reserves including oil and gas, as well as rare metals, Moscow does have measures to hit back, and its cooperation with China in payment systems could limit the impact of any Western sanctions.
The Canadian Senate was set to vote on whether the act would be extended. Given the legal requirements for invoking the act to begin with were shaky, it is rumoured that the Senate was not going to pass it. This would mean Trudeau revoked it before it could be struck down. If true, this likely would have been done as a PR move to maintain public perception that the invocation of the emergency act was well thought out.

Trudeau was receiving a great deal of backlash from fellow politicians in Canada, Canadian citizens and world leaders around the world who thought the use of emergency powers in this situation was not only unnecessary but the standards for invoking the act legally were not met.
  • Edge of Extinction: How To Proceed? featuring the views and analysis of Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via his YouTube channel--09:34), who has fearlessly focused his attention throughout much of his prior career and retirement on the climate crisis.
at