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 LappĆ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, June 8, 2021

  • Tom Cotton Explains Why Warmongers Love The Wuhan Lab Leak Theory by Australian Caitlin Johnstone with her American husband reading the script, which is provided from her article. My reaction: Johnstone is referring to any official investigation, but we, the people, have our own collective efforts to uncover the truth. However, the latter will not make it onto corporate media. Thus, efforts will depend upon the people who will want to seek the truth so that they will not have to suffer through a pandemic, or some other manufactured catastrophe, again. This, in turn, will depend on our efforts to get people to stop watching/listening to billionaire-owned and/or controlled media corporations (which includes PBS and NPR) which provide coverage of "news" and "analysis". Billionaire-owned/controlled media are supplying you with pure, self-serving propaganda.
  • The False Idea of Who You Are by Alan Watts from the After Skool channel of YouTube. My reaction: I would only substitute "Planet Earth" for "universe" to arrive at the reality of humans as a part of the web of life on our unique planet Earth. It was common in Watts' day to label the universe as our unique planet Earth.
  • Means of Extinction: Broiling Earth featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via his YouTube channel--04:36m), who has focused on the climate crisis, fearlessly listing scientific articles that indicate the growing probability of extinction of humans and most other species that have evolved on planet Earth.

Monday, May 3, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, May 3, 2021

  • World’s Most Tyrannical Regime Can’t Stop Babbling About “Human Rights” from the weblog of Australian Caitlin Johnstone who provides us with an audio and written version. My reaction: This is another obvious expression of the "woke" phenomenon referred to in yesterday's Escobar post. The following paragraph sums up the use of "human rights" by the agents of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.
In Imperialist Brain Worms World, “human rights” is nothing other than a propaganda weapon to be used for building antagonistic international coalitions, manufacturing consent for invasions and regime change ops, and spinning the dominant narrative in support of starvation sanctions and world-threatening cold war escalations. It’s just mass-scale concern trolling of the most destructive and malignant sort imaginable.
  • The Criminalization of Dissent by CJ Hopkins, a major satirist, from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc. (Note: Hopkins is an American playwright, novelist and political satirist currently living in Germany.)
... in “New Normal” Germany, if you dissent from the official state ideology, you are now officially a dangerous “extremist.” The German Intelligence agency (the “BfV”) has even invented a new category of “extremists” in order to allow themselves to legally monitor anyone suspected of being “anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security,” like … you know, non-violently protesting, or speaking out against, or criticizing, or satirizing, the so-called “New Normal.”
 
Naturally, I’m a little worried, as I have engaged in most of these “extremist” activities.
 
Hopkins is serious. And, he discovers this phenomenon in the USA, the center of the transnational capitalist Empire.
Russia is a great nation with an important place in European history and culture. Washington’s policy is to expel Russia from Europe in order to secure its own domination of the rest of the continent. 

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, April 20, 2021

  • NYU Professor Fights Back Against the Academic Crybullies from Minds and The Corbett Report in a 45:55m video report. (Note: Mark Crispin Miller has been teaching at NY University for a number of years. He explains how and why his academic job is at stake despite his teaching techniques of critical thinking in the context of propaganda.) My reaction: This is another piece of evidence that the concentration of wealth under advanced capitalism can stifle critical thinking even in an academic setting. If you, in any way, challenge ruling class narratives in an advanced capitalist system, you will be punished by losing the means of supporting yourself.
While this seemingly hopeful program of another new deal for domestic progress is proposed in order to save capitalism once again by muffling if not smothering calls for more radical change, the old deal of the murderous warfare state is even more dangerous than ever, with the amateurs of the Trump regime replaced by more experienced creators of policies of mass murder to preserve the alleged chosen people status of American capital and its servant class of more diverse than ever professionals who arrange minority rule and convince people it‘s democracy.
  • The Illusion of US and British Government Aid by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My reaction: The two posts (this and the above) have been covered in past years by this weblog, but the American people still don't get it. It's probably a case of "better late than never". However if we fully realized such views back in the 1970s, we might still be looking at a future.
  • Whale Songs by Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian independent blogger, from her weblog. 

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, December 19, 2020

  • Through the (Empire's & Zionist Israel's) Looking Glass by Ron Horn for Surviving Capitalism (Not). This is a best post. (At 4:48 PM CT I edited, and added to, this post.)
In the past I have frequently used Wikipedia entries for explanations and documentation for various items, but apparently starting in 2010, this online encyclopedia has been corrupted by secret political agencies of what I refer to as the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire which was gradually formed after WWII. This practice is consistent with all their efforts at dominating ordinary people through control of the information they access. This indoctrination and propaganda elements represent essential hallmarks of neofascism that the directors of the Empire have adopted.
At first propaganda agents only targeted media corporations, academic (see this example), and entertainment organizations by supporting people who played along with the capitalist ruling class's agenda to control all information ordinary people received. Often these subversive efforts were aided by actual infiltrations of targeted organizations.
However, apparently beginning around 2010, agents of the Empire started noticing people being influenced by accurate online organizations like Wikipedia. Thus, they immediately began to subvert these organizations in order to screen out ideas and information that did not support the Empire's agendas, and likewise, to support ideas and information that did. Wikipedia was one such project. See this, this, this, this, and this. Thus, in the past, I frequently used Wikipedia entries to document claims I made in my posts, but in the past several years I've had to exercise judgment as to which entries to use or not to use. It seems that any of their posts that are remotely political can be rejected. 
But most ordinary people are not aware of this development, and believe everything that they learn from subverted organizations that are omnipresent in their lives. (See this satirical piece.) Propaganda agents have since added social media to their list of targets to influence the preceptions of ordinary people who are thoroughly confused by the pandemic project. 

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, July 14, 2020

And it will take a mass movement of the working class, with Black people and oppressed people in the lead, to chart a new course for the United States that is driven by the ideological and material demand for socialism rather than the reactionary scapegoating and political repression inherent in the capitalist system.
What are the chances of that happening?
  • Classism by Terry Everton (political cartoonist) from Dissident Voice.
  • Protecting the American Opium Trade from Tales of the American Empire, a YouTube channel. (Note: A little history of how early American and British capitalists (including an ancestor of FDR) aggressively gained their wealth from the opium trade with China.)
Official history makes frequent references to the British tea trade as a vital part of the British empire in the 1800s. It’s hard to understand how trading tea could be so profitable, until one learns that opium was a major component of the tea trade. Opium is a powerful and addictive pain killer that is often refined into heroin. It was banned by governments a century ago, but the opium trade continues to this day with secret approval by government officials. The American government has used the US military to protect the opium trade for two centuries and evidence shows this continues. The extent of this protection is open for debate, but if one connects the dots the image is ugly.
  • RFK, Jr. talks with Dr. Andy Wakefield about his new movie, 1986: The Act. This post is from Children's Health Defense. (Note: This is about a movie made by Wakefield regarding Big Pharma's control over the government which resulted in the latter protecting the exorbitant profits of pharmaceutical corporations while permitting Big Pharma to severely impact the health of some young people. The film costs $12.99 to view. I have seen it and recommend it to those who have a special interest in this subject.)

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

I especially recommend these posts for today: Tuesday, October 15, 2019

  • The CIA Goes HBCU [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] by Glen Ford from the Black Agenda Report.
The options for the YPG Kurds are stark. They are slowly realizing they were used by the Pentagon as mercenaries. Either they become a part of the Syrian federation, giving up some autonomy and their hyper-nationalist dreams, or they will have to share the region they live in with at least two million Sunni Arab refugees relocated under Turkish Army protection.
The end of the dream is nigh ....

Monday, October 14, 2019

I especially recommend these posts for today: Monday, October 14, 2019

  • Is America Ready for Socialism? Finian Cunningham interviews American professor of politics Colin S. Cavell posted on Strategic Culture Foundation. (This professor knows his American history.)

Friday, July 26, 2019

Articles recommended for Friday, July 26, 2019

Once Again Chomsky and Achcar Provide a Service to the US Global Dictatorship

Click here to access article by Canadian Stephen Gowans from his weblog.

Gowans accuses some of America's as well as Britains leading intellectuals as collaborating with the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire to destabilize governments that the Empire doesn't like with most recent target of Venezuela. He accuses them of using sophistry to rationalize these destabilization efforts. Chomsky and Democracy Now's Amy Goodman have already dramatically demonstrated this by their opposition to questioning the government's version of what happened on 9/11/2001 and many other crimes instigated by the Empire (see this, this, this, this, and this).

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Yellow Vest Realities and Reactions [updated]

Click here to access a nearly one hour interview with Prof. Gabriel Rockhill of Villanova University conducted by KPFA's C. S. Soong.

I was most interested in the observations and analysis of Rockhill about French intellectual's lack of support, and even criticism of, the Yellow Vest Movement. This suggests support for my observations that the rich capitalist ruling class in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire has co-opted the highly trained and indoctrinated upper-middle class in their class warfare against other working classes. Unfortunately, he doesn't explain how this was done. But it seems obvious to me: material rewards and the threat of unemployment. Because of technological advancements and the awareness of intellectuals as "opinion leaders" who play a crucial role in capitalist society, the capitalist ruling class must support them in order for today's capitalism to sustain itself.

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Ecosocialist debates

Click here to access article by Louis Proyect from his blog. (The author has an annoying habit of listing abbreviations without, or delayed, references to their sources. Thus FB stands for Facebook and NLR stands for New Left Review.) 

One of the merits of this piece is that it cite references to academics who are debating the Green New Deal and related issues confronting academics who express some concern about the destabilization of our climate and the destruction of human habitat. But I think it also illustrates a lack of seriousness among people who have been inundated for most of their academic lives by capitalist indoctrination and thus exhibit some inhibitions about cutting back of the extraordinary materialist lifestyles that they have enjoyed in the Empire's academic institutions. Even Proyect exhibits some of this brainwashing when he sees Europe free of the domination by transnational capitalists in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Also, his views about Swedish-style social democracy is at least 50 years old and out-of-date.
Even if the Western European GND standards were adopted by a majority of politicians in the USA, there would be overwhelming forces opposed to their adoption by energy, transportation, petrochemical, and banking interests. In fact, the same array of reactionary forces would block the evolution of the USA into a Swedish-style social democracy. Unlike Western Europe, the USA is an imperialist hegemon that would resist all attempts at a New Deal of any sort, either Green or FDR-redux.

Those are the realities we are dealing with and the naĆÆve hopes of the DSA/Jacobin left will crash up against them on day one of a Bernie Sanders presidency. And those who hope in neo-Kautskyist fashion that this will precipitate a general strike and other revolutionary measures are just kidding themselves.
Proyect finishes his essay with this statement:
Let me conclude with a few words about the possible outcome of this debate in the future as economic reality will bring things to a head. In my view, there is an element of truth in Huber’s claim that workers will resist a ceiling on consumption. After all, with television ads 20 times an hour urging you to buy a car or a trip on Norwegian Cruise ship, it becomes a form of brainwashing.

I suspect that a combination of ecological ruin, war, and deepening alienation of the kind that has produced an opioid crisis will eventually turn quantity into quality. Human beings are susceptible to baser temptations that an advanced capitalist economy can produce but the promise of a more peaceful life that offers leisure time and spiritual fulfillment will convince workers that giving up 5,000 square foot homes, SUV’s and meat every night of the week is worth it. A Peaceable Kingdom, so to speak.
 
 It appears to me that most people cited in this debate regard the subject as only an "academic debate"--much like a fashionable topic to entertain themselves over dinner in some fancy restaurant.