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, March 16, 2022

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

This book is an absolutely gigantic work that I salute because few people would be able to carry out such an investigation over 40 years, with such precise data – everything is sourced – to denounce this odious corruption that has completely perverted medicine in the world.
These people are like mobsters, knowing they’ll probably die a violent death but willing to risk it all for a chance at living the high life. There’s not the slightest iota of wisdom guiding their actions. Just the primitive impulse to dominate and control. They’re living their lives and making their decisions essentially on autopilot, guided by unconscious impulses they themselves don’t understand.
 
My reaction: She is addressing all the "control freaks" in the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire. I don't know where all these conflicts between the control freaks in the Empire and the rest of the world will end, but I don't think that it will be good for most ordinary people on our planet.
  • The root causes of the war in Ukraine by Guy Mettan from Arrêt sur info. (Note: This translated post I found on Vanessa Beeley's weblog.) My reaction: As I see it, this forced invasion by the Russians stems from the ongoing war on Russia by the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire to crush it since its founding in the 1917 Russian Revolution. The capitalist world has never forgotten that these Russian people have established a socialist system that purports to replace the system of capitalism everywhere in the world. Because they see a residue of socialism in Russia and because Russia (and China, Iran, etc.) are striving to be independent of their Empire, such a replacement threatens a system which has given so much wealth and power to capitalist ruling classes across the world.
  • Say Hello to Russian Gold and Chinese Petroyuan by Pepe Escobar from The Cradle (based in Columbia). My reaction: There is mixed news in this article. One, that China, Russia, and assorted other nations are developing an international payments system that is independent of SWIFT which is controlled by the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire, and two, the missing gold, a stored value created by the Russian economy, from Russia's vaults.
My reaction: In today's post Andrei Martyanov, seems to know where the missing gold is stored. 
  • Japan, a Land of the Rising Sanctions by Vladimir Danilov from New Eastern Outlook. My reaction: Danilov seems to regard official sanctions and other actions by the Japanese government are offset by Japanese corporations wanting to continue doing business with Russian corporations.
  • 💥‘This Is What Liberal War Fever Looks Like’ by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. This is a best post because it contains so many important insights. My reaction: Of course, Crooke is not omniscient, and no one individual is. That is why we need, trust, and communicate with each other--to find the truth about our lives. But, he recognizes Mike Whitney's insight expressed in the following quote:
... we must recall that one object of this ‘war fever’ always was to bind Europe to the U.S., and into NATO, and to prevent Russia-China co-opting Europe into the Great Asian Heartland economic integration project – thus leaving the U.S. as an isolated maritime ‘island’, strategically speaking.
 
Later on he writes:

The hardcore Neo-cons have had positive results: Nordstream 2 is cancelled – leaving Europe without a cheap secure source of energy.
 
But, could this be only temporary?

Europeans face a bleak future of soaring prices and economic contraction. For now, they can offer little political dissent to the controlling élites. The frameworks for genuine (as opposed to token) opposition in Europe, largely have been dismantled in the zeal of Brussels to suppress ‘populism’. EU citizens will bear the prospect in sullen anger (until the pain becomes unbearable).
 
And, there are always European corporations that want to cut energy costs in order to thrive. 
So what if the Amazon is reaching its final tipping point where trees will soon begin to die off en masse. So what if land ice and ice shelves are melting from below at a much faster rate than predicted. So what if temperatures soar, monster hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires devastate the earth. In the face of the gravest existential crisis to beset the human species, and most other species, the ruling elites stoke a conflict that is driving up the price of oil and turbocharging the fossil fuel extraction industry. It is collective madness.
 
This quote is how a fascist "control-freak" from the Council of Foreign Relations writes--after he/she writes an obligatory dose of self-justifying propaganda:

“There will be no substitute for military strength, and we do not have enough,” writes [Elliot] Abrams for the Council on Foreign Relations [a ruling class organization], where he is a senior fellow: “It should be crystal clear now that a larger percentage of GDP will need to be spent on defense. We will need more conventional strength in ships and planes. We will need to match the Chinese in advanced military technology, but at the other end of the spectrum, we may need many more tanks if we have to station thousands in Europe, as we did during the Cold War. (The total number of American tanks permanently stationed in Europe today is zero.) Persistent efforts to diminish even further the size of our nuclear arsenal or prevent its modernization were always bad ideas, but now, as China and Russia are modernizing their nuclear weaponry and appear to have no interest in negotiating new limits, such restraints should be completely abandoned. Our nuclear arsenal will need to be modernized and expanded so that we will never face the kinds of threats Putin is now making from a position of real nuclear inferiority.” [My insertions]
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