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 LappĂ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, January 29, 2022

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, Congress launched the bicameral, bipartisan Abraham Accords Caucus to support normalization between Israel and Arab states. Backed by pro-Israel groups, this new political development can be interpreted as a way for the Israel lobby to regain its power over a U.S. Congress that is increasingly critical of Israel. 
Journalists Benjamin Norton and Alan MacLeod join Mnar Adley to discuss how the mainstream media spent the last week beating drums of war with Russia over Ukraine with headlines and talking heads funded and sponsored by Lockheed Martin and NATO.

Meanwhile, there wasn’t a single article covering how the US-Saudi-UAE coalition cut off the internet to Yemen for several days while dropping hundreds of bombs on civilians resulting in hundreds dead and over a thousand injured. Guess which story CNN covered? Both conflicts were brought to you by weapons manufacturers.
Consider the possibility that all the Russia hysteria we’ve been fed the last few years was carefully rolled out to manufacture consent for the exact escalations against Russia that we’re seeing today, and all the framing of Russia as the hostile aggressor has been ass backwards.

Let’s not forget after all that this has been fundamentally driven from the beginning by the same intelligence agencies who have an extensive history of lying about exactly this sort of thing.
With these three measures, Russia seeks to further isolate the US from Nato and Europe. In the end, the US will be confronted with one of two options, either agree to trade Nato’s open-door policy for Russian agreement not to deploy into the Western Hemisphere, or force a confrontation that will result in a Russian invasion of Ukraine that is seen by Europe as being the fault of the US.

The chess pieces are already being moved. While the US may not see it, a Russian checkmate can be predicted sooner, rather than later.
All those people in the West who thought they could ignore Russia’s interests are starting to suspect that they don’t have the leverage they thought they had. Russia is pretty sanctions-proof. It is the closest thing to an economic autarky on the planet: lots of territory, lots of raw materials, lots of water, lots of energy, all the manufacturing it needs, self-sufficient in food, well-educated people, backed up government, armed to the teeth. It’s pretty impregnable and it’s not run by fools. And it’s very closely allied to the biggest manufacturing power and population in the world. Not an easy target at all and almost impossible to hurt without hurting yourself more.

And all this to preserve the so-called right of a country no one wants in NATO to ask to be admitted. What a principle to die for!  
WATCH THE FULL MOVIE AT: https://youtu.be/11RwCm_OaGc [1:29:46]
 
Directed by Dylan Avery and produced by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, “The Unspeakable” follows four families in their ongoing struggle to find the truth about the murder of their loved ones on September 11, 2001.

This is an extended interview with one of the film’s four protagonists, architect Bill Brinnier, who lost his best friend Frank De Martini on 9/11. De Martini was the World Trade Center construction manager on 9/11 and was responsible for saving the lives of at least 50 people that morning. Brinnier has been actively advocating for a new 9/11 investigation since 2007.
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Friday, January 28, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, January 28, 2022

The Freedom Convoy began in British Colombia and has been gathering up more truckers and citizen support as it makes its way across Canada. Some say the number of vehicles involved in this convoy is anywhere from 11,000 to 35,000. A number that has been hard to pin down accurately. Nonetheless, video footage indicates the support is huge.
 
(Note: You may be interested in Russell Bank's "take" (14:29) on the fact that he doesn't find any mention of this event in corporate media. In addition, you may want to view visual footage of this event taking place in western Canada by watching this video provided by RT's channel on YouTube--00:48)
The Defender’s COVID NewsWatch provides a roundup of the latest headlines related to the SARS CoV-2 virus, including its origins and COVID vaccines. 
  • Judge Blocks Hospital Workers From Quitting Their Jobs featuring Jimmy Dore commenting on a Wisconsin legal ruling by a judge, and guest Kurt Metzger, a comedian occasionally interjecting humorous satirical and serious comments, from Dore's channel on YouTube (11:13). 
Conservatives in UK parliament are launching an all out attack on people’s fundamental rights through a series of regressive bills on policing and the right to protest, voting, immigration, legal proceedings and more. These attacks on rights have been met with massive opposition with broad sections of British society taking to the streets across the country. All the while, British institutional politics have been up in flames with PM Boris Johnson being implicated in scandal after scandal.

Asad Rehman, the executive director of War on Want (https://waronwant.org/), discusses the implication of these regressive bills, especially on the most marginalized communities, as well as the hypocrisy of the British ruling class. 
  • Can We Tame the Methane Monster? featuring Raya Salter interviewing scientist Bob Howarth of Cornell University from Facing Future's channel on YouTube (29:46).
#Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and a major contributor to the climate crisis. Many jurisdictions, however, are using outdated accounting methods that vastly underestimate methane’s impact. Further, the fossil fuel industry has created momentum for the use of greenwashing technologies like “blue hydrogen.” Host Raya Salter speaks with Professor Bob Howarth to discover what science is revealing about the true threat of methane, and how New York State is innovating on methane policy with the recently passed 'Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act'.

Dr. Bob Howarth is the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell University. Dr. Howarth is a biogeochemistry and ecosystem scientist. His research laboratory works broadly on human alteration of element cycles in coastal marine ecosystems and watersheds, and also works on the environmental consequences of energy systems, particularly from oil and gas development. Dr. Howarth is also a member of the NYS Climate Action Council, which is tasked with developing the plan for NY to reach its nation leading climate goals. Bob works on policy domestically and internationally and was pivotal in helping NYS devise its GHG regulations.

Host Raya Salter is a climate and energy attorney, educator and activist. She is an adjunct professor of law at Cardozo Law School and the author of the book “Energy Justice” (2018). She is also a member of the New York State Climate Action Council. She is @ClimateAuntie on IG and her web site is www.RayaSalter.com.
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Thursday, January 27, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, January 27, 2022

Only two years ago most people understood “bodily autonomy” to be a fundamental, unquestionable human right. Now it is being treated as some kind of perverse libertarian luxury, as proof that the “deplorables” have been watching too much Tucker Carlson or that they have come to idealise the worst excesses of neoliberalism’s emphasis on the rights of the individual over the social good. 
 
My commentary follows: 
 
I am unconditionally opposed to state mandates because it assumes that the state knows best the medical care for us ordinary people. This is particularly true for societies that, up to this time, are always ruled by self-serving ruling classes, and who, under the present system of capitalism over the course of the past several hundreds of years, substantially own the economy and thus has enormous control our lives via the government and other social institutions. Therefore, I oppose the state issuing any mandates for two principle reasons: First, we in the dominant capitalist countries have been convinced by centuries of propaganda issued by the rich and powerful in order to legitimate their rule, that we live in a democracy. This assumption is absolutely and fundamentally false. Secondly, this assumes that our governmental leaders know what's best for us. If this were true, we would have much better educational institutions and medical care.
 
This fact justifies the socialist platforms that emphasize education based on scientific principles instead of self-serving propaganda issued by the ruling socioeconomic class of capitalists. We would not see the censorship of top-flight medical experts and practitioners that we have seen. Science has been distorted by the self-serving capitalist ruling classes, who are totally focused on profit and the protection and advance of their system which delivers wealth/power to these classes. This ruling class has gained legitimacy because of these advances, but their focus has been distorted by its sole preoccupation with the advancements of capitalists' interests of wealth and power. (Thus, most efforts of science have been directed to the perfection of ever-deadlier weapons.) The latter has been solely concerned with the protection of their system of capitalism (private ownership/control of economic property). Control has been possible by "ownership" which supplies them the means to control of economic property. Thus, the state, as well as all other institutions, has been captured by capitalist ruling classes and is always concerned with the protection and advancement of their system, and crushing all other systems that may arise.
 
The principle means that the ruling class has discovered has been thorough indoctrination and propaganda as a means to protect their capitalist system. Ever since the Russian Revolution of  1917, which was heavily influenced by the writings of Karl Marx, the capitalist ruling classes have worked overtime trying to crush any thoughts along these lines using indoctrination and propaganda to infiltrate the minds of their subjects. Likewise, you probably don't know about the invasions of capitalist nations to crush the Soviet Revolution which was unsuccessful but had the effect of distorting the Russian Revolution with the rise of Stalin and a bureaucratic class. Since then, we have experienced military means of crushing any socialist and communist nations (nations that sought public ownership and control of their economies) that might appear. 
 
Thus, we have experienced the devastating war of WWII as explained by me after reading extensive histories during the 1930's period which led to that war. Since then we have experienced the rise of the US/British/Zionist Empire and numerous wars all over our planet to crush any nation that aspired to an alternative system. These numerous wars were always legitimized using propaganda by the ruling class's media corporations, educational and even entertainment institutions (Hollywood films).
  • Ethiopia, from the Development State to the Neoliberal State by Djibo Sobukwe from Internationalist 360°. (Note: I advise people who have some familiarity with Africa's economic problems to read this. Otherwise, the abbreviations of organizations and abstract nature of its presentation may overwhelm you. Except for this drawback, the article offers a pathway to important insights about the effects of Euro-American neoliberalism on Africa.) The author concludes his analysis as follows:
Although there are definitely some problems and contradictions in the Abiy government, his positive efforts at unifying the population across ethnic lines by way of the Prosperity Party in general and the peace declaration with Eritrea in particular should be celebrated. The primary contradiction at this time is the US backed TPLF aggression that threatens to tear the country apart which could result in its balkanization and must be opposed by all anti-imperialist and Pan Africanists.

As Revolutionary Pan-African internationalist and anti-imperialist we condemn all oppression and exploitation be it based on class, ethnicity/race,  gender or sexual orientation.   We agree with Farid Abdulhamid of the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa when he says …

“The only system that can work for Ethiopia and Africa at large is the establishment of a revolutionary, Pan-African, socialist state that can not only forge national unity and Pan-African identity, but end centuries-old imperialist driven, conflict-prone, socio-economic inequalities.” [24]
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Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Former CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson in an interview last week said mainstream media’s shift from investigative journalism toward a corporate-sponsored, “fact check” mindset originated with left-wing activists seeking to discredit conservative news outlets.

That shift has had a major impact on news coverage of the pandemic, Attkisson said. 
 
My reaction: Attkisson's assertion that "left-wing activists" were partly responsible for the shift in "news" presentations is wrong because such activists were trying to correct right-wing propaganda. The whole political spectrum has shifted to the right as the ruling capitalist class has become more desperate to control information in order to retain power. This class has always limited their control of information, but now it's getting worse.
  • Holocaust Survivor: Never Again Is Now. Unless We All Resist features Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav who describes the striking parallels between what she witnessed as a child in Nazi-controlled Romania, and COVID policies being enacted today by governments around the globe--from Children's Health Defense (12:50).
  • Graphika: The Deep State’s Beard for Controlling the Information Age by Alan Macleod, PhD from Mint Press News. My reaction: Macleod's sub-headline is "Semi-state actors play a very important role in today’s online landscape and in the 1970s, Graphika employees would likely have been working directly for the CIA.", and this is relevant given the fact of the ruling class's penchant (def.) to privatize every economic activity, that is, put everything under the control of the Deep State via their private ownership and control and away from government "interference" and accountability. Graphica has received a bulk of its funding from DARPA (Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the CIA, and other "intelligence" services.
Humans are storytelling creatures; that’s why it’s possible to gain such a tremendous amount of power over us by controlling our stories. We are storytelling creatures whose primate brains weren’t evolved for the purpose of giving us any absolute understanding of ultimate reality, whose senses only take in a tiny fraction of our surroundings, whose minds don’t process what’s happening in the ways science tells us things are actually happening.

What do you get when you have a storytelling animal with a very limited capacity to perceive life as it really is?
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Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, January 25, 2022

  • Think Big Pharma’s Corrupt Now? THIS Is What’s Next!!! featuring Russel Brand, a British independent comedian who thinks for himself, exposing how the pharmaceutical industry (Big Pharma) are supervised by people who depend on Big Pharma to pay their salaries using his channel of YouTube (12:12). This is known as "regulatory capture".  My reaction: Robert Kennedy, Jr. who, as an environmental lawyer, has long studied governmental environmental regulatory agencies and has become aware of the regulatory capture of these agencies by polluting corporations, mostly the oil & gas corporations. I heard his talk at Oregon State University in around 2000 where he revealed the details of his findings. Now he is taking on Big Pharma which he appropriately criticizes their capture of the National Institute for Allergic and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Fauci's agency, and exposed how Fauci and the Gates Foundation are benefiting from Big Pharma's profits (see this and this) in his recently published and best selling book, The Real Doctor Fauci. But he has been smeared as an "anti-vaxer" and mostly ignored by the corporate media. Meanwhile the Gates Foundation has essentially captured the World Health Organization being the largest contributor to them.
Unfortunately, the New York Fed is, literally, owned by these mega banks [as is the Fed] as its shareholders. The banks elect two-thirds of the Board of Directors of the New York Fed. [my insertion]

All four of these banks played a major role in the 2008 financial crash and all four of these banks (together with Bank of America) control the vast majority of derivatives.

It should be abundantly clear by now that the Federal Reserve is the worst possible regulator of these megabanks and Congress must act with urgency to strip the Fed completely of supervision and oversight of these serial bad actors, as well as its ability to prop them back up with bailouts every time their derivatives blow up.
  • Monday morning headlines by Andrei Raevsky (The Saker) from "The Saker" weblog. (Note: If this doesn't scare you, nothing will except maybe the ongoing fear propaganda about the "pandemic" broadcast by media corporations to nearly all of the residents of the Empire.)
Contrary to the narrative of U.S. politicians and journalists, the August 2021 withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan did not mark the end of the United States’ so-called “forever war” but rather a shift in U.S. policy—from direct military intervention and occupation to one based on economic sanctions and indirect political subversion. Although the tactics changed, the goal is the same: the accumulation of wealth and power through class warfare against the Afghan people.
  • Science Snippets: Habitat featuring the views and analysis of Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via his YouTube channel--11:23), who has fearlessly focused his attention throughout much of his career on the climate crisis. (Note: Let us listen to a scientist who knows what he talks.)
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Monday, January 24, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, January 24, 2022

  • Part 1: Children Vaccination an interview with Geert Vanden Bossche, a DMV, PhD, world- renowned independent virologist and vaccine expert, formerly employed at GAVI and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation--from his website Voice for Science and Solidarity.  
  • Defeat the Mandates March on D.C.: The Tide is Turning by Stewart from PeakProsperity. My reaction, one: I doubt this good news because in southern Minnesota where I live, people believe everything they hear broadcast on media corporations. The gullibility of people is absolutely astounding! Reaction, two: Notice the thin line and a thick line under the title of this post. My theory is that the tech "powers that be" must be indicating disapproval for what's above the thin line.
  • Skinned Alive by Karen Hunt from her weblog on Substack. (Note: This is a rather lengthy post, but a thought-provoking with our future determined by the control-freaks, the capitalist ruling class.)
If along the way we are being enticed into a prison, assured that it is for our own health and safety; that it will protect us from a dangerous outside world, well, why not comply? No one really believes that they are actually going to be harvested or eliminated. That sounds too crazy.

But if Covid has taught us anything it’s that fascism is still very much alive and well and living in a neighborhood near you.

If anyone is going to be harvested or eliminated it sure isn’t going to be me. I am a good citizen. It will be that unvaccinated sinner over there. 
  • Acceptance of and Commitment To Freedom by Iain from In This Together. My reaction: I wish I could believe this, but I only have contact with thoroughly brainwashed people who are "infected" with the fear that media corporations broadcast.
  • The CIA’s War On Democracy featuring a conversation with Edward Curtin and Bobby Kennedy from Children's Health Defense's channel on Odysee (47:14),
  • Russia will intervene in Ukraine by geopolitical analyst M. K. Bhadrakumar from his weblog Indian Punchline, based in India. My reaction: In contrast to Bernhard and his weblog Moon of Alabama, Bhadrakumar looks at the prospects of a peaceful settlement to Russia's insecurity problem with foreboding. This should be an opportune time for the imperial crazies of the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire to test Russia's intentions with the American people obsessed with the coronavirus and totally ignorant of geopolitics.
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