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, April 15, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, April 15, 2022

  • You Couldn't Make This Sh*t Up features Russell Brand, a British comedian and former drug addict turned serious political critic--from his channel on YouTube (13:53).  
Everywhere we look, the data combined with what’s happening on the ground appear to be clear: disastrous outcomes are happening. Right now. All around us.

A large insurance company CEO is on the record stating that deaths among working-age adults (below 65) are 40% above expected values. That is not just “unlikely” but shouldn’t happen ever outside of a major war.

And it’s not covid-related because we are supposedly tracking those. So, besides it being a massive surge, what exactly is the cause? It’s not all because of suicides, though we know those are up, tragically. It’s not cancer. It’s not war, yet. It’s not fentanyl overdoses.

What could it be?
 
My reaction: Martenson acknowledges that there is no one that explains this phenomenon, but he insists that societies would ordinarily determine the cause of this striking statistic which is from a recent study in contrast to what was found in 2020. (I have not yet listened to all of the remarks by Martenson.) He seems to suggest that "mass psychosis formation", and governmental authorities, medical authorities, and media corporations resist this recent data statistic from becoming common knowledge. 
 
I've personally read several articles about athletes dropping dead while participating in their sport.
  • The Alliance of MI6, the CIA and the Bandéristes by Thierry Meyssan from Internationalist 360°. My reaction: There is only one thing glaringly wrong with Meyssan's history. I've read widely on the events that led up to WWII, but I never read a concern about "absolutely all Western states without exception believed, at one time or another, that the Nazis were the solution to the economic crisis of 1929". On the contrary, I read that all the ruling capitalist classes approved of Germany and its aim to create lebensraum in the East and extinguish socialism forever in Russia. Time Magazine even appointed Hitler as "Man of the Year" in 1938 (although not on the cover because they didn't do that in previous years). 
The Western ruling capitalist classes approved of the Nazis and gave in whenever their interests were not threatened. Hitler, in his fanatic desire to restore Germany to pre-WWI borders, attacked Poland in September of 1939 after Chamberlain waffled in negotiations with Hitler because the British had a mutual defense treaty with Poland. Included in this history is the "phoney war" pursued by the British Empire against Germany for eight months. You see, the British ruling class approved of Hitler's goal of adding lebensraum in the Soviet Union which would result in their longtime efforts to extinguish a belief in any system other than capitalism. 
 
On the eve of WWII, the capitalist nations had plans to carve up the world into sections that they would exploit and rule over. Japan's ruling capitalist class had their own imperialist concept of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. What most Americans are unaware of is that the US ruling class had their own concept, the Grand Area (this area was extended after WWII and became known as the "free world"). The Allies patiently let Germany expand and grow their empire on the European continent and move east toward the Soviet Union. However Germany unexpectedly invaded Poland, with which Britain had a defense treaty, instead of going from Czechoslovakia toward the Soviet Union. Thus began a phony war after which the Nazi government attacked Britain and continued to move east and invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. 
 
Because the ruling classes of European nations were split with their attitudes toward the Nazis, Netherlands, Belgium, and France had been easily overrun by German forces. The Allied ruling classes expected that Germany would easily defeat the Soviet forces. But whereas the defeat of the Allied countries was mainly due to their ruling classes being split in their orientation to the fascist nations of Germany, Japan, and Italy, the Soviet government was united in their opposition to fascism, an advanced form of capitalism. As a result, the German forces encountered great difficulty after only a month into their invasion.
 
In the present day, the directors of the Empire knew that the threat of the Russian experience with the Nazis of WWII would greatly worry them. The Empire established a far-right wing government as the result of their engineered coup in 2014, and cultivated and promoted ties with the neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Added to this, the army of the Empire, NATO, was threatening the Russian nation by pushing ever closer to their borders, and they finally had enough with these moves of the Empire. Thus, they invaded Ukraine to de-Nazify the country.
... a series of ostensible crises — Russiagate, the 1/6 riot, the COVID pandemic and now this war — have, in rapid succession, convinced not just liberals but increasingly large numbers of Westerners in many ideological camps not only to tolerate but to crave state/corporate censorship. 
... the loudest criticism is certainly coming from the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany who is constantly in the media to accuse the country of cowardice, especially at the beginning of the war when Germany refrained from sending weapons to Ukraine. Although Berlin has made a major turn and is now sending weapons to Ukraine, further anger is caused by the fact that incumbent Chancellor Olaf Scholz is not bowing to American and Ukrainian pressure to close Russian gas taps altogether.

Russian gas is a matter of existential need for Germany, which due to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, is threatened with achieving a lower than expected GDP. In fact, Germany would experience a devastating recession if it were to turn off the Russian gas taps.
  • Who’s Watching The Watchers? features host Ross Ashcroft and his guest Peter Bloom, author of Monitored: Business and Surveillance in a Time of Big Data--from Renegade's channel on YouTube (27:42).
  • How NY Times Used Subway Shooting To Push Pro-Cop Propaganda features Jimmy Dore and Max Blumenthal, and showing Twitter clip by Alex Karakatsanis, a civil rights activist and author, to illustrate propaganda promoted by the NY Times, as an example of mainstream media, instilling in the public the need for more cops in spite of the fact that such crimes are very low--from Dore's channel on YouTube (18:26).
A conversation with theologian Carmody Grey, anthropologist Justin Kenrick, and Extinction Rebellion activist Clare Farrell interrogating the meaning of courage in our times.
 
What kind of courage is needed as we enter an era of climate breakdown? How do we find courage when we see continued rampant investments in fossil fuels and other activities that worse the impacts of the climate crisis?

This is a conversation aiming to encourage each other as we move through this phase of on the streets rebellion, because how we respond collectively now affects everything.
  • Edge of Extinction: It's Not Your Fault features the views and analysis of Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via his YouTube channel--06:53), who has fearlessly focused his attention throughout much of his prior career and retirement on the climate crisis.
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