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 careerists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label careerists. Show all posts

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, January 14, 2021

  • Tech censorship: how paranoid should we be? This 36:15m video from Unherd (British) features Freddie Sayers interviewing Glenn Greenwald regarding the accelerating trend of social media giants censoring views they don't like.
  • Chaos agent: Right-wing blames US Capitol riot on notorious instigator banished by Black Lives Matter by Max Blumenthal from The Grayzone. My reaction: Most activists are unaware that capitalist agencies of the Deep State like the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. All the "intelligence" agencies use agent provocateurs to disrupt any activities by movements, both foreign and domestic, anyone who interferes with the power and profits of the capitalist ruling class. Because most activists don't pay attention to accurate foreign news provided by independent sources, they are often naive about the domestic uses of agent provocateurs. Fortunately, Blumenthal isn't, and at least some members of BLM are not. Such agent provocateurs are very well paid and follow capitalist moral principles that all capitalists adhere to: what is best for me, my family, and is sanctioned by powerful authorities are the right course of action.
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Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Global problems of this scale require global cooperation. ....The balance of forces available to drive such a class agenda on the international stage is no longer there; political dynamics in the countries of the West, in particular, but also in the larger states of the developing world (such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa) are necessary to change the character of the governments. A robust internationalism is necessary to pay adequate and immediate attention to the perils of extinction: extinction by nuclear war, by climate catastrophe, and by social collapse. The tasks ahead are daunting, and they cannot be deferred.
But populations of planet Earth are under the control of their ruling classes who are descendants of former ruling classes over many generations all of whom derived their power in an ultimate sense from violence, or the threat of violence, against peoples of the Earth.
You two recognize the self-serving class agendas of ruling classes, but you cling to an unrealistic "robust internationalism" as a solution. But the ruling classes and the threats of violence covered over by fake democratic ideologies still exist, so why cling to a false hope such as "robust internationalism"? The answer is to clean your conscience of all guilt after serving the ruling classes all your lives to obtain comfortable lives for you and your families. You two, and the highly educated social classes of which you are members, are as guilty as the ruling capitalist classes of our impending doom. Without people like you supporting the ruling classes and their power over the rest of us, we, and all species on Earth, could not have reached the dire "perils of extinction" with which our very existence is threatened today.

You and your social classes chose the comfortable route in order to serve the ruling capitalist classes. You are not like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Mordechai Vanunu, etc. all of whom made huge sacrifices down through the ages to confront and expose the powerful.
  • Stop Watching Propaganda by James Corbett from his weblog. (Note: Although Corbett recognizes the value of analyzing propaganda, he explains that he is moving on in the future to the subject of a "better way of living" (approximately at 16:15 of this 18:51m podcast)). My reaction: Unfortunately, I infer that he is moving on to pitch the agorist model that has roots in the Austrian school of economics which is an earlier version of capitalism, as a way to live. He doesn't yet give any indication of how he has been thoroughly propagandized (indoctrinated) into a capitalist way of perceiving reality. He has not yet acknowledged the total immersion of capitalist culture (or ways of thinking) that has formed his perceptions since WWII. But I never give up on hope.
He disposes of the Austrian school of economics only to resurrect another false version of American economics as he screams in this article as "SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN". The Canadian academic is well-read on historical material, but he, too, shows symptoms of being thoroughly a product of mainstream American education. 
Although I've spent nearly an hour researching his biography, I can't find where he was educated. Numerous websites list the websites he as published--and they are many. One website furnishes what I think is his perspective of history: American capitalism was on the right course from the "Founding Fathers" to Franklin Roosevelt, but the British are the "evil-doers" that led the US astray.
I think he, too, is a product of American education; and that he, too, has been so well indoctrinated by one version of American capitalism of which he is totally unaware.
  • We Are at War by Peter Koenig from Global Research. This is a best post. My reaction: Although he doesn't mention "class" as in "class wars" and "ruling classes", I think his analysis explains much of the current social-economic issues and it fits with a more Marxist analysis which has influenced my perceptions of social-economic realities through mostly independent studies. 
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