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 capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts

Saturday, June 12, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, June 12, 2021

Organized crime joined the criminal ruling capitalist class in plundering the rest of USA for profit and power. The ruling class is essentially criminal (asocial) because they are driven to exploit the rest of American society to promote their self-serving interests. They are both "birds of a feather" that use violence to obtain their power. The only thing that is different about the ruling class is that they have developed and mastered the persuasive techniques of indoctrination and propaganda, and are willing to use violence (or the threat of violence) if indoctrination and propaganda fail to effect compliance by the rest of society to serving their self-serving interests. 
 
Organized crime was welcomed by the capitalist cabal in the State Department (think the Dulles brothers, the Council on Foreign Relations, etc.) that sought to build an empire after defeating the overtly fascist-capitalist regimes of the Axis Powers. They initially supported German capitalists with international approval and financial support by other capitalists because they saw them as useful to destroy the Soviet Union (read my commentary and this article) which was the only state that didn't permit capitalism. But early on they saw the German fantasy of the Third Reich threatening the power of the British Empire, so they soon joined up with a winning combination of English speaking nations to eventually build a US/Anglo/Zionist Empire (after 1967 the financial power of Zionists were admitted to the Empire). 
 
After WWII, organized crime used Harry Truman who was easily duped to launch their war on the New Dealers, many of which were socialists and communists, from the FDR administration; and set-up the CIA, an unaccountable subversive organization to pursue directly the policies of the ruling capitalist class. The capitalist cabal launched an anti-communist crusade which included attacks on unions (Taft-Hartley Act) and attacks on left-wing liberals, socialists, and communists (read this article).
  • News on China (in sixty seconds) via the YouTube channel of Dongsheng News. My reaction: Yes, China is booming because the US ruling class has shifted much of its industrial work to Chinese capitalist industries in order to take advantage of cheaper labor and greater profits. Too bad for US workers who in my youth were internationally famous for their "Yankee know-how", but that is the way capitalism works. Now that China is developing into a rival of US capitalists, the US ruling class is worried--but not worried enough to shift their work back. "Profits über alles" is the theme of all capitalists. Now our masters can only threaten China with violence.
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Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, June 1, 2021

The irony of course is that capitalism was supposed to offer something different. It was meant to offer a life of more leisure and free time. Technology was supposed to advance in ways that would bring public holidays every month, possibly even every week. Luminaries like economist John Maynard Keynes dreamt of a 15-hour work week by 2030. Yet capitalism has produced the exact opposite. Its effect has been to preserve and extend work. It has also created problems in the content and meaning of work.
  • 💥Israel, a Beachead in the Middle East by Stephan Gowans at the Institute for the Critical Study of Society (ICSS Marxist). This is a best post. (Note: This is a webinar featuring a talk by Gowans via YouTube arranged by this Oakland, California Institute. Gowans' talk begins after the introduction at 03:59m and ends at 58:36m followed by a Q&A. (I recommend the talk only because he has recently done extensive research on Israel which resulted in a book.)
One US military leader has called Israel “the intelligence equivalent of five CIAs.” An Israeli cabinet minister likens his country to “the equivalent of a dozen US aircraft carriers,” while the Jerusalem Post defines Israel as the executive of a “superior Western military force that” protects “America’s interests in the region.” Arab leaders have called Israel “a club the United States uses against the Arabs,” and “a poisoned dagger implanted in the heart of the Arab nation.”

In his latest book, Israel, A Beachhead in the Middle East, Stephen Gowans challenges the specious argument that Israel controls US foreign policy, tracing the development of the self-declared Jewish state, from its conception in the ideas of Theodore Herzl, to its birth as a European colony, through its efforts to suppress regional liberation movements, to its emergence as an extension of the Pentagon, integrated into the US empire as a pro-imperialist Sparta of the Middle East.
  • Colombia: “The Government Murders with Impunity because the U.S. Empire is Behind it.” by Carlos Aznarez from  Internationalist 360°. (Note: This is a report of the US's major beachhead in South America to police that continent for any nation that aspires to become independent.) My reaction: This is another instance where the well-indoctrinated American people, many of whom are struggling to survive, ignore such a report--if they are exposed to it at all.
  • The Yenisey River sheds its icy coat from RT via YouTube. My reaction: More evidence of global warming that is currently threatening human species (and most others). Isn't it ironic to see a Wikipedia entry on this river in Russia's Siberia before which YouTube warns you about Russian influence in a quote from a corrupted Wikipedia entry?
  • Means of Extinction: Conspicuous Consumption featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via his YouTube channel--3:20m) who has focused on the climate crisis. My reaction: Because McPherson is a physical scientist and not a social scientist, he is not aware that capitalism, and its propaganda machine of advertising, constantly exhorts people to consume unnecessary products to promote profits and power for the capitalist ruling classes. Thus capitalism has caused the climate crisis which McPherson argues with much evidence that abrupt global warming will result in the extinction of humans and most other species inhabiting the Earth. That is precisely why capitalists are now energetically exploring other planets in the hope of migrating there after they have spoiled the Earth for humans.
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Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, May 26, 2021

  • Transcript – Guns and Butter Interview with Bonnie Faulkner March 8, 2021 [posted on 5/18/21] from Wrench in Gears. (Note: Notice the link to the actual interview broadcast on WBAI in New York. Also, during the interview Faulkner asks a key question after she introduces the question: "I was taught that one of the main [characteristics of] capitalism is that it must grow or expand. You have written that 'in order for capitalism to continue on a beautiful planet of finite resources, the plan is to shift growth to digital realms' which is what you’ve been discussing. How is virtual capitalism going to piggyback on real-world capitalism?") [my insertion] 
Rejection of a resolution calling for “respect for international humanitarian law” is not consistent with Washington’s intention to abide by the “rules-based international order” which is apparently the solution to all the world’s problems — providing the rules are not applied to Israel.
Has Big Tech poisoned our politics or has it merely revealed deep social and political divisions? With each passing day making that determination becomes more and more difficult. Those who have the power to control our social interactions define what we understand to be reality. This is simply tyrannical.

CrossTalking with Ron Placone and Suzie Dawson.
 
My reaction: Of course Big Tech is controlled by the ruling capitalist class! It is another weapon in their vast arsenal that is aimed at all those that are not on board with the agendas and the interests of the ruling class.
This short history does not reveal the history of collusion by the Western capitalist ruling classes with German Nazis to crush the anti-capitalist Soviet Union and to rid the world of any kind of socialism that threatens the rule of capitalists. After WWII this history of their past collusion with Nazis has been rewritten to eliminate nearly all references to true history. This was especially true of most giant corporations like the Ford Company, IT&T, General Motors, etc. who kept their German industries running throughout WWII. 
 
Early in the war, conspirators, mostly in the State Department, saw the opportunity to construct another empire out of the remnants of the former British Empire with the intact industry and powerful military forces of the USA. (This was all laid out in earlier posts: here, here, and here.) But present generations know none of this history because it has been scrubbed from history books by historians appointed by the governors of their new empire, the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire (Israel and the right-wing power of Zionist finance were added later).
 
Today we see the current reactionary forces at work in the Empire's capitalist ruling classes to rid themselves of the burden of supporting poor people by eliminating "useless eaters" to lessen the threat climate destabilization confronting them so they can resume business as usual. Like I wrote in a commentary on 2/7/2021:
 
... this is a dangerous thought. Imagine that our masters in the ruling class have in their deluded thinking reached a conclusion that in order to save themselves [as their capitalist system] they must get rid of us untermenschen? They might in this belief decide that we ordinary humans are "useless eaters" and expendable, or worse yet like "communists" or anti-capitalists--class enemies, and kill us all in order to save themselves from the climate crisis, which they have caused, and they know is coming sooner or later. Perhaps the Great Reset is one such delusion. [my present insertion]
 
Our masters are presently busy trying to eliminate labor laws that guarantee workers' rights using the excuse of protecting the health of workers based on recommendations from CDC and OSHA, and the incessant propaganda about their contrived "pandemic". They are busy creating a two-tier society in which "good Germans" are extended all kinds of privileges based on their good behavior and the rest of us are denied travel and access to many services. 
  • Greetings from “New Normal” Germany! by CJ Hopkins. an American playwright and political satirist, who currently lives in Germany. He is mostly serious in this post, and describes the current living conditions of the German "new normal"  which is currently threatening to come to the USA.
Last week, here in “New Normal” Germany, the government (which, it goes without saying, bears no resemblance to the Nazi regime, or any other totalitarian regime) implemented a social-segregation system that bans anyone who refuses to publicly conform to the official “New Normal” ideology from participating in German society. From now on, only those who have an official “vaccination pass” or proof of a negative PCR test are allowed to sit down and eat at restaurants, shop at “non-essential” stores, or go to bars, or the cinema, or wherever. 
  • Science Update: Arctic Summit 2021 featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist who has for many years focused on the climate crisis, and from his YouTube channel (09:56m).
The entire western half of the United States, from the Pacific Coast, across the great basin and the desert of the southwest, up through the rockies to the northern plains, is currently being ravaged by a drought so bad that many are now calling it a megadrought, the worst one the country has seen in 1200 years.
at
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Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Dizikes uses a definition of collectivism that may not be relevant in this study:
 
Collectivism broadly refers to the inclination to prioritize a group’s needs over an individual’s concerns, and social scientists have often worked to measure its presence among different populations. The researchers found a culture of collectivism to be a key driver of mask use even after accounting for many other factors, including political orientation, state policies, the severity of Covid-19 outbreaks, and more. 
 
But what if the data provided by government agencies like the CDC, under the control of the capitalist ruling class, are all skewed (paying more to hospitals if they diagnose patients as having Covid-19, pressure on doctors to diagnose patients as having Covid-19, using PCR tests to inflate statistics, to instruct their "news" corporations to plant reports emphasizing the hysteria and fear of a "pandemic", etc.) in order to fake a pandemic? Now this researcher at MIT pleases his bosses and grant agencies with a study based on the above definition. Meanwhile, small businesses are going bankrupt and corporations are reaping record profits. And when some of the plain States are under the control of conservative capitalists who believe in old-fashioned conservative ideas, could we arrive at the same results? 
 
I think this study is a very clever way to reach conclusions that support the existence of a "pandemic" and the various self-serving interests of the current ruling class! (I've seen other studies done to please funding sources.) No doubt this study will be quoted widely by those serving the ruling class to validate their clever project to create a "pandemic".
 
I think that most people have complied with these restrictions on our liberties out of concern for the rest of society, but that doesn't mean they haven't been deceived for nefarious purposes of the ruling class! The study conveniently goes along with all other efforts to wrap the deceivers of the ruling class with virtue. 
 
Considering all the evidence, many were deceived once again as they have been in the past: the assassinations of key figures who wouldn't go along with the aggressive agenda of the ruling class, the so-called "war on drugs", 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, "the war on terrorism", and now this ... that so far is enriching billionaires, putting small businesses into bankruptcy, their employees out of work, and teaching the lessons of obedience to the great "unwashed masses". Could it be that it was the billionaires' plan all along? 
  • The Origin of the Species (trailer) from Journeyman Pictures and their YouTube channel. (Note: Journeyman Pictures is investigating the topic of robots and their efforts to produce "good" effects.) My reaction: To me, it's simple. If you have the ruling class "experts" designing robots, they will be used for the self-serving needs of the capitalist class. Technology is neutral.
  • Antiganda – #SolutionsWatch featuring James Corbett of his weblog The Corbett Report pointing to some activists who are trying to encourage people to achieve independent, critical thinking. 
What is the point here? It is that this whole ark of military strategy rooted in massive aerial bombardment – reaching back to the 1920s, and pushing forward until today in Gaza, is expiring. It has become obsolescent (at least in the Middle East), just as did trench warfare in the wake of 1918.

Tunnels (now, much more sophisticated ones), have gained renewed life as the answer to massive aerial bombardment on civilian terrain as a prime psychological tool of war. They mark the end of a strategy. Swarm missiles, and smart drone clusters are today’s inflection points: the ‘new’ warfare – just as much a game-changer as was the advent of the longbow (in the 1300s). They have become, as it were, somehow Hamas’, Hizbullah’s, the Houthi’s and Iran’s ‘alt’ Air force. 
 
Later, Crooke writes:
 
The U.S. and the Europeans however have no idea what to do about the situation, beyond calling for a return to ‘normality’ – one that permits Israelis ‘to return to the beach’, and the Palestinians ‘to their cage’, as one commentator, caustically remarked about the meaning of ‘normal’. 
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Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, April 14, 2021 (This is all the recommended news articles that I could stomach.)

  • Life Insurance Unchanged By COVID? featuring Ben Swann and Bob Burnett, a knowledgeable person regarding statistics of the insurance industry. Burnett has observed no changes in life insurance rates and other death stats in this 10:43m video from ISE.
  • 💥Big Corporations Now Deploying Woke Ideology the Way Intelligence Agencies Do: As a Disguise by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog at Substack. This is a best post. (Note: You need to substitute the Empire's capitalist ruling class in place of "big corporations" or "corporate class" to make the most sense out of this article.) My reaction: The Empire's transnational capitalist ruling classes are now appearing to know no limits in their deceitful practices to maintain their power along with profits. The Empire's secret services are wrapping themselves in social justice causes like BLM and LGBT. Greenwald starts with the practices of the British secret services, but soon describes such practice among the US's:
The CIA — in between military coups, domestic disinformation campaigns, planting false stories with their journalist-partners, and drone-assassinating U.S. citizens without due process — joyously celebrates Women’s Day, promotes what it calls The Agency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Officers (ANGLE), hosts activities for Pride Month, and organizes events to commemorate Black History Month. The FBI does the same.
 
Even old-fashioned conservatives (The American Conservative) are being turned-off by these practices, and he quotes some of their criticisms. Most of Greenwald's exposé drips with cynicism at this display of current deceptive practices, but later he gets seriously straight by concluding with this statement:
 
The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the corporate class and the ways they abuse and eliminate labor, control government, and destroy the working and middle classes will be impossible to see, as we are all blinded by the glare of their virtuous Instagram posts about racial justice and their unified campaigns against voter suppression. In an instant of swooning over their benevolent devotion to social justice, we will forget what they actually exist to do. When we work to harness their power to support our own political causes, we forget about how out of control and menacing that power is, and what it is most often used for. And that is exactly the way they want it. 
  • Countdown to Destruction by Andrew Anglin from The Unz Review. (Note: This article, as well as recent others, is very disturbing. My reaction: Yes, as Biden proclaimed, "America is back", and is engaged in provocative actions everywhere! If we make it through the next few months, it will be a miracle.)
  • The Vicious Circle: Policing and the Culture of White Male Violence by Nicholas De Genova from Spectre. My reaction: This is from a supposedly "Marxist" journal, but the author of this piece avoids the argument that the "Culture of White Male Violence" is actually capitalist culture. His reasoning doesn't remove gender from his argument. Apparently most of the article was written before the killing of Daunte Wright by Kim Potter, a female police officer. But in effect De Genov supports the gender bias of the ruling class--it's all about gender, not capitalism, the sacred cow of the capitalist ruling classes!
 
 
  • Shock Therapy: How Austerity and Privatisation Destroy Nations by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My reaction: I got a chuckle out of his statement that "When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, US advisors tried to persuade the Russian government that Russia could quickly change from its existing Communist system to an extreme version of capitalism." "Extreme version of capitalism" is now the new normal in the USA and much of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire and beyond.
at
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