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

Showing posts with label Big Tech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Tech. Show all posts

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Sunday, May 16, 2021

How about considering real democracy? This would require a wholly novel plan rather than simply reciting a self-congratulatory word without substance upon examination.

Democracy is for psychologically mature adults. Citizen responsibility for self-governance must involve knowledge acquisition, sober reflection, evidence examination and reasoned discussion built into everyday public life. It must require sound collective judgment and moral responsibility for all local, regional and national decisions. To create a grown-up nation retrieved from the grip of ruling-class psychopaths who have long disempowered, neglected, exploited and abused us along with much of the world, we must mature into political grown-ups.

  • Dems Unhinged Attack On Rose McGowan For Telling Truth featuring Jimmy Dore and McGowan telling truth about our fake democracy, from Dore's channel (20:59m) on YouTube.  If you liked this, you may very well be interested in a later segment of this interview entitled Biden Is The End Of #MeToo of this interview. And also, you may be interested in this post entitled "Hillary Clinton's War Monger Appointed By Biden". My reaction to the latter post: Dore is discovering the real difference between the two parties governing our "democracy": the Democrats are cleverer at deception strategies whereas the Republicans act according to their beliefs that the rich should get richer and the poor be damn by ed.
  • Glenn Greenwald: Intercept Targets Journalists Of Color featuring Jimmy Dore and his guest Greenwald from Dore's YouTube channel. (Note: This piece covers the Intercept's distorted attacks on low-level journalists who report actual scenes. This report on the Intercept is typical of all mainstream journalists.) My reaction: Fortunately, Greenwald "wised up" (def.) about the Intercept and their billionaire owners in their efforts to use and co-opt him. But sadly, Greenwald is an exception among professional journalists "on the make" (def.)

Monday, April 12, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, April 12, 2021

From the increasing sophistication of US intelligence/military contractor Palantir’s predictive policing programs to the formal announcement of the Justice Department’s Disruption and Early Engagement Program in 2019 to Biden’s first budget, which contains $111 million for pursuing and managing “increasing domestic terrorism caseloads,” the steady advance toward a precrime-centered “war on domestic terror” has been notable under every post-9/11 presidential administration.

.... And, while Facebook has long sought to portray itself as a “town square” that allows people from across the world to connect, a deeper look into its apparently military origins and continual military connections reveals that the world’s largest social network was always intended to act as a surveillance tool to identify and target domestic dissent.

  • Being on the Left Involves Losing a Lot by Nathan J. Robinson from Current Affairs. My reaction: So why keep fighting against corporations within the capitalist system? Better in the years to come to organize the fight against capitalism and for socialism, that is, the public ownership and control of the economy to serve social needs, not private needs of billionaires.
  • The FUNNIEST Russia-Gate Headlines Of All Time featuring Jimmy Dore (a comedian from his Rokfin video channel--58:35m) together with Aaron Maté from The Grayzone and Ron Placone hilariously reviewing numerous Russia-Gate headlines from major media corporations. 
  • Sunbeams From Cucumbers: The View From the Khanate of Kaganstan by Patrick Armstrong from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Note: This is mostly about the evidence of the ignorance displayed the Kagans (Robert Kagan, theorist husband and Victoria Nuland, operative wife) which are playing such a big role in the born-again Obama administration--the redux of the Biden administration.) My reaction: With Zionist players like this, what's to worry us? Except maybe a global nuclear war.
As the China-Russian-Iran alliance continues to gain new momentum spreading win-win cooperation and development across Asia, Africa and the World, the dying unipolar system run by detached militarists, financiers and technocrats is doubling down on its weird mix of 1) a “scorched earth” offensive threat to “dissuade” China and Russia from continuing on their current trajectory and 2) a “positive” green game on which nations are invited to tie their destinies as an alternative to China’s BRI [Belt and Road Initiative]. [my insertion]
  • Who Will Go Extinct featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson on his YouTube video channel (2:38m) briefly stating what he has determined as inevitable in spite of human illusions that we are an exceptional species commonly found in mythology and religions.

Monday, March 29, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, March 29, 2021

  • How the Rich Distort Politics by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My reaction: Read this if you still have doubts about the sustainability of capitalism.
  • It’s Time to Bust the Tech Talent Pipeline by Isobel van Hagen from Current Affairs. (Note: Read this article if you want to know about the latest CIA effort to recruit young students into serving the capitalist ruling class's Big Tech corporations.)
Palantir, the CIA-backed software startup, provides near-omniscient “crime-predicting” military surveillance for U.S. intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has also built technology accused of creating racist feedback loops in “predictive policing” software. The company, which recently went public, was co-founded by Peter Thiel—the Trump-backing venture capitalist billionaire who, in a display of comic book-style villainy, literally wants to inject himself with young people’s blood.
Shea's argument is correct that the CIA's Western firewall is complete in the sense that they control all major organs of media corporations and that they will use this giant propaganda machine, combined with AI, to ever greater efforts to confuse people and propagandize people within the USA and throughout the world. 
 
However, I disagree with his allegiance to Stalinism and his identification of the latter with Marxism/Leninism. Stalinism is a worn-out version of Marxism-Leninism which created a bureaucratic class under Joseph Stalin's paranoid control in the Soviet Union.  
 
The Russian people saved themselves from being slaves of capitalism under the control of German Nazis which were strongly supported by international capitalists. This is the basic reason that his type of rule ended with his death and all pretensions of working class control vanished with Stalin's disappearance. With the failure of the classic fascist nations in WWII, mostly English-speaking capitalists emerged and organized their own fascist empire after the war under the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.
 
However, the peoples of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and all the exploited peoples of planet Earth have risen from the ashes of WWII to confront this powerful, hegemonic Empire, and it looks like they are going to win. But their win will be a Pyrrhic victory because the victors will then face the onslaught of a destabilizing climate. The latter will result in the inability to support human and most other life forms due to the devastation of the environment and, finally, the destabilization of the climate caused by capitalist rule over the past several centuries.
 
The strength of this article is in the descriptions of the fact that the CIA has taken over the control of major media corporations and has turned them into a media of 24/7 Empire propaganda. 
This article contains one expression of Russian and China fantasies, but totally ignores the reality of the climate crisis. 
 
After WWII some nations which had devastated economies and other underdeveloped nations rose under the difficulties of the Cold War to form mixed economies which combined forms of capitalist enterprises under the guidance and supervision of socialist ruling classes. China was a prime example and the first to combine the two systems. These were compromises that suited the advanced capitalists of the Empire because they initially were able to profit from China's cheap labor. The Soviet Union soon collapsed and reformed with a largely mixed economy, and the two nations led the way to lead all other nations wanting to be independent from the burdens of serving exclusively the nations of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.
 
China and Russia are leaders of this mixed economy movement throughout the world, but I believe they are indulging in fantasies of their own much like the more purely capitalist countries of the Empire. Although members of both ruling classes are expressing more concern about the developing destabilization of the climate, they are both pursuing capitalist development policies. Thus, those nations of the Empire have their Great Reset fantasy; but Russia and China have other fantasies that largely ignore the developing climate crisis, but necessary for their dedication of independence from the hegemonic Empire. 

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, February 25, 2021