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 films/books/art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label films/books/art. Show all posts

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.

Monday, May 24, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, May 24, 2021

  • Imagining Year 2020 Without Fauci, Redfield, USIAID, and the CDC by John Tamny from American Institute for Economic Research. My reaction: From my personal experience, I find "cancel culture" highly effective in limiting the views of ordinary Americans, particularly in relation to Americans believing whatever CDC and Dr. Fauci say despite abundant evidence to the contrary. "Cancel culture" is a ruling class sub-ideology that justifies censorship of those who have dissenting views, a characteristic of historical fascist-style capitalism. Worse yet, "cancel culture" is encouraging, and largely succeeding, in getting ordinary Americans to ignore dissident views related to the pandemic no matter how qualified they are on the subject.
  • The Disintegrated States of America by Pepe Escobar from "The Saker Blog". (Note: This post is essentially a book review of Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse, a recent book authored by Andrei Martyanov that has had a marked influence on Escobar's thinking.)
  • We’re wired to care for others featuring an interview conducted by Sophie Shevardnadze of Tbilisi, Georgia (Sophie&Co.) with Patricia Churchland, a retired neuroscientist from San Diego, California, from Shevardnadze's RT channel on YouTube. My reaction: Although Churchland's theory of human nature as social animals makes sense, she admits that her field of neuroscience are unable to fully explain the phenomenon of sociopaths ("psychopaths"). Could it be that the man-made system of capitalism rewards "psychopaths" with wealth and power? 

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.)

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, April 6, 2021

  • Biden’s Infrastructure Plan by Jack Rasmus from Alternative Visions. (Note: Rasmus discusses the deceptions related to Biden's vaunted infrastructure plan in a 57:13m audio recording.)
  • Pepe Escobar Joins Jeff J. Brown for a Great Conversation about the US, EU, China, Russia, Iran and DPRK [North Korea], plus much more. This is posted on The Greanville Post. (Note: I especially recommend listening to Escobar's opening statement (first 20 and half minutes) regarding diplomatic efforts of the US vis-à-vis China and Russia. Brown, who has lived and worked in China for about 16 years, and Escobar are good friends. Brown, who is now retired, lives in Brussels. Escobar lives in Thailand. Escobar is, in my opinion, is one of the top geo-political journalists in the world. I recommend the rest of the conversation (the whole 1 hr 10m interview) for those who are well informed about international politics.
I agree with Crooke's argument that following the meeting at Anchorage between the USA and China, and that China no longer believes in a cooperative arrangement that can be obtained with the US or the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. However, I cannot agree with his following assertion:
 
Socialism versus capitalism? No, it is a long time since the U.S. was a capitalist economy; it’s hardly even a market economy today. It has become, more and more, a rentier economy since leaving the gold standard (in 1971). 
 
Capitalism, like all other systems, has stages that it goes through just like the old colonial relationships that Euro-Americans had prior to WWII with the relatively pre-industrialized countries of the world in contrast to the essentially neo-colonial relationships the former had with the latter since WWII. The post-WWII era saw the frequent use of financial weapons that was first exposed in the writings of John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
 
Similarly capitalism in the Empire has moved beyond industrialization to the financialization stage by their pursuit of neoliberalist policies which accumulate wealth with the less risky interest of loans from the IMF, World Bank, and international banks located in the Empire. Also, these finance capitalists use loans as weapons to pry open less advanced economies for exploitation by Empire corporations. Crooke is evidently too influenced by the writings of Michael Hudson who ignores the exploitation of American workers by "captains of industry" (to the chagrin of his Trotskyist parents) and champions the previous phase of capitalism--industrialization.
 
Now we, who reside within the Empire, increasingly witness the use of censorship and manipulation of information that has replaced to a considerable extent more authoritarian methods of old-fashioned fascism. We, who reside in the Empire, are now in a neo-fascist phase of capitalism where capitalist ruling classes rely much more heavily on the control of information that is allowed to ordinary people. (To be sure, if the latter methods fail, the ruling class uses police and soldiers to crush all opposition.) Those who reside outside of the Empire are frequently subject to subversive efforts by agents of the hyper-aggressive capitalist Empire.
  • Dealing With Demons by Larry Romanoff from "The Saker" weblog. My reaction: This is a very lengthy post, but also a very interesting one from an author who is probably Canadian (based on his spelling of "organisers" below), retired and living in Shanghai, China. His report refers to the city of Wuhan and a single province, Hebei, of China which, I believe, was the only province that had numerous temporary restrictions imposed on its citizens. See the province in the center of China on the map below:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d6/31/0f/d6310f7b860e46be5b26f24008263ef5.jpg

 
 I include two paragraphs from the article which offer some significant reasons why China dealt with the corona virus much more effectively than other Western countries including our own:
 
One reason the Chinese were able to deal with the epidemic while the UK and USA stumbled in the dark is that the Chinese think, with considerable justification, that they have been under biological attack, on and off since c.1950, and were therefore prepared with well-laid plans and competent organisers to respond to such an event. As soon as the central government learned the specific nature of the outbreak, it responded massively and to a very large extent the population understood the necessity of what was asked of them and cooperated.


The main objective of China’s Government is the rejuvenation of China, in part demonstrably evidenced by the determined efforts made for the betterment and the well-being of its population, which is reflected in the credibility and high level of trust the Chinese people place in their government. These concepts don’t exist in the west. In the US, the “world’s model for everything”, a virus epidemic is seen through lenses of profiteering by large corporations, sick people not being humans in need of assistance but merely a new lucrative “market” – for those with money to pay. An American hospital is not a place for healing the sick but a kind of barnyard filled with cash cows to milk. This is one fundamental reason underlying America’s chaotic and hopeless approach to dealing with the epidemic. The Trump administration failed to help itself and refused to help even its friends, on the one hand ignoring the suffering and extreme difficulties in China and wasting its time scoring cheap political points on the world stage, happy with the loss of life and the economic damage China was suffering.
 
 
I want to add only two fundamental reasons for the difference of outcomes. One, is that Americans have been lied to so often in the past 70 years (the assassinations, 9/11, invasion of Iraq, etc.) that many Americans no longer believe what the authorities and major media corporations tell me--whereas the Chinese completely trust their authorities and follow their instructions to the letter. Two, I believe that the ruling capitalist class has zero interest in the health of ordinary Americans. They see them as only sources of profit. 

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, March 23, 2021

(Sorry for the late posting for Tuesday--I have been preoccupied by personal matters--I thought I had already uploaded it.)
  • A History of Warring on the Homefront by Mickey Huff from Dissident Voice (originally from Project Censored). (Note: I am posting this article/video from Dissident Voice because the latter have conveniently included the film of which this review on the film is based. Also, this is essential reading/viewing for all those fellow Americans who missed the actual history of American working people and were brainwashed by their history classes in the USA.)
  • OPCW Whistle Blowers Debunk Cover-Up & U.S. Propaganda featuring Jimmy Dore interviewing Aaron Maté of The Grayzone what has learned about the disinformation and censorship involved in the ruling class's reporting  of "chemical attacks" in Syria directed by the Assad government from Dore's Rokfin channel (26:22m).  
  • Thoughts On The Iraq Invasion by Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian independent blogger, from her weblog. My reaction: She knows far more than Alfred McCoy, a prominent American historian, does about the mindset of the current American ruling class. Now that the core of the ruling class, combining the resources and wealth of the USA, the British Empire, and international Zionist Jewry, is back under Joe Biden, they intend to resurrect their longstanding project to rule the world (commentary).
  • Dispatches from the Congo: The Truth Behind US Claims of ISIS Presence posted on Internationalist 360° featuring Kambale Musavuli from the Centre of Research on the Congo explaining, in a 21:09m video, how US-backed forces are engaging in massacres on behalf of corrupt political leaders while also covering this in media reports as "fighting terrorism" and protecting "human rights" of local populations. My reaction: Surprise, surprise! (a cynical remark).

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, March 11, 2021

The rich US capitalist ruling class using direct threat of violence supplied by the US military have succeeded in using Columbia as a base to control all of South America. They have done this under the guise of fighting the trafficking of illicit drugs, and, of course, against any violation of human rights. However, their real intentions were to control South America for the benefit of US corporations. 
 
Meanwhile, this self-seeking wealth and power ruling class have used censorship and propaganda to keep out any hint of their real intentions from ordinary Americans who have in the past enjoyed some of the benefits of this control. As long as some of the benefits kept coming for ordinary Americans and they were distracted by all the entertainment that the ruling class supplied to them, they ignored what their government, controlled by capitalists, was doing to the rest of the world. Thus, our masters have depended on the ignorance of their subjects regarding their real intentions. 
 
It is becoming increasingly clear to ordinary Americans that they have been deceived about a number of issues by their masters in the ruling class. Whether a sufficient number of ordinary people wake up to this fact to challenge these policies remains to be seen. A positive outcome requires ordinary Americans to identify with ordinary people, not only Colombians but all people of the world because they have all been targets for exploitation by capitalist ruling classes.
  • Aid for Profit: The Dark History of USAID by Saheli Khastagir from Current Affairs. (Note: This general policy used government aid to underdeveloped nations following WWII to serve the profit needs of US corporations by tying aid to purchases from US corporations.)
  • When American Small Towns Loved Socialism by Dave Nance, Noah Van Sciver, Paul Buhle, and Steve Max from Yes!. (Note: This post is for those of you who, through no fault of your own, are ignorant of the real history of the USA. Also, I think that the contents of this post don't justify the headline that only "small towns loved socialism".)

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, March 10, 2021

  • Empire Update: US Kisses Saudi Crown + Taliban’s Tet Offensive featuring Abbie Martin reporting the adventures of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire during the week in a 8:38m video from Media Roots. (Note: She reports more news than the title of this post acknowledges.) My reaction: This would be good for Americans to watch this weekly report instead of TV "news" reports by media corporations.
  • Chaos In Ukraine Is Making An Epic Comeback from South Front. (Note: This post includes a 3:48m video report and transcript.) My reaction: This is another report on how true Joe Biden's statement that "America is back". The main capitalist ruling class is back after the Trump interruption and returning to their favorite strategies to counter Russia's influence as illustrated by Ukrainian developments reported in this post and the bombing and missile strikes on Syria. Among the developments in Ukraine are those that the ruling class is already implementing here in the USA:
It all started with the shutting down of opposition TV channels and immediately moved to attacks on the largest and most popular opposition party – “Opposition Platform – For Life!”.Opposition leaders were then sanctioned, for being “Putin agents”, and many of its members were openly censored and persecuted. Then it came down to censoring and persecuted another well-known opposition figure – Anatoly Shariy, and his party.

Websites were pulled down, accounts were banned, cases were opened against those against President Volodymyr Zelensky and his “Servant of the People” party. 

  • BREAKING: Jaw-Dropping Development In Malcolm X Assassination featuring Lee Camp at his YouTube channel reporting a new eye-opening development related to the assassination of Malcolm X. This is direct evidence, that many people have suspected over the many years since the assassination: that the NYC police department is responsible for this murder. Of course, the latter was acting according to orders issued by the ruling capitalist class to silence him because they didn't like his efforts at raising the consciousness of poor African-Americans. This incident will never be reported by mainstream "news" corporations who will continue serving the ruling class with the dissemination of propaganda.

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, February 3, 2021

  • This Is Why They Attack Him - Putin Explains Why We Need New Economic Policies by Bernhard (a German independent blogger) from his weblog Moon of Alabama. (My reaction: The title refers to the theme in this report, and, in addition, you can learn what you are missing by reading this article. You will also learn what corporations like NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, NPR, CNN, etc. fail to inform you. They want you to be ignorant of what goes on in the world, and fill you with propaganda that serves billionaires so that you will end up being compliant serfs. If this article interests you, you might also add to your information about the real world by reading this.
  • Taking on Telecom’s “5G” by David Rosen from CounterPunch. My reaction: Of course, taking on the Telecom's "5G" is like taking on the capitalist system. This issue is about the very core of capitalism to make profits and thereby create influence in the sacred halls of Congress.
  • ‘Cancel the Rents’: People Across the US Mobilize Calling for Housing Relief from People's Dispatch. My reaction: This is another way that the ruling class can impose the divide and conquer strategy on the American people. Landlords have substantial mortgages and bills to pay for upkeep of their properties. With ordinary Americans looking out for their own interest and their family's interests, we can expect more turmoil in the days ahead.
  • Are UN climate talks leading to a global dictatorship? by by Simon Butler from Climate & Capitalism. My reaction: Butler's central criticism of the book is: "Climate Leviathan warns that a worldwide imperial state is on the agenda, but provides no credible arguments or evidence." But, maybe that's obvious, and therefore no need to supply evidence.

Saturday, January 30, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday & Sunday, January 30 & 31, 2021

  • Dump Davos #1: Data Colonialism & Hackable Humans. This video presentation is an almost 2.5 hours, and it is an experiment. I know that my followers cannot afford nearly $10/month, but I can. So if I do not encounter any harassment from posting this video from Rokfin, I will do so in the future. (I encourage those that can afford it to subscribe to Rokfin.) The content of the video shows that our capitalist masters are worried, realistically I may add, about the twin threats to humans posed by nuclear war and environmental destruction. But their 3rd threat is their fantasy-concoction--they call the "Great Reset"--that they are planning for us, the "useless class" of humans. This is a best post. (I just realized that Harari gave this speech at last years Davos meeting which makes it even more important.)
In this video series investigating the people and agendas of the World Economic Forum, Whitney Webb and Johnny Vedmore analyze a recent speech given at Davos by Israeli "futurist" historian Yuval Noah Harari that exposes the WEF's agenda for the "useless class", the rise of exploited data colonies and the creation of an internal and external surveillance state.
  • Socialist Group Cheering Censorship Gets Banned From Facebook w/Glenn Greenwald featuring Dore and Greenwald pointing to the irony of the left's support of censorship. (Via Jimmy Dore's channel on YouTube.) If you liked this video, you should be very interested in what looks like a continuation of the interview in this post "Why Online Dems Hate Jimmy Dore! w/ Glenn Greenwald". My reaction: Greenwald and Dore are only talking about highly educated upper-middle-class people who have long supported the ruling class, and many of whom are conflicted between their commitment to their principles and preserving their well-paid careers. Ordinary and working people are largely left out of this discussion because they are confused and lack organization, and because Congress is supposed to have charge of our lives. It must be recognized that highly educated and rewarded people are critically important in order to make the capitalist system work, and the system itself is devoted to private rich owners. It follows that this class of people should not be counted on to support the interests of ordinary and working people. Dore is extremely frustrated because he looks to this class to save ordinary people.

Thursday, December 10, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, December 10, 2020

I viewed this 45 minute film last night and I highly recommend it. On 9/11/2001 I watched on TV the buildings of the World Trade Center come down, but I was already convinced that the collapse of buildings was a ruse to get Americans prepared for dramatic changes in foreign policy. Sure enough, people everywhere were shocked and prepared to do anything for their country. Gas station attendants in Oregon, where I was living at the time, insisted that their customers put patriotic stickers on their cars. Laws were rushed through Congress like the Patriot Act to grant government agencies to secure all kinds of records on Americans and the suspension of habeus corpus laws for alien Americans. Members of Congress who were concerned about the rush to pass these laws were targets for anthrax attacks. I felt very uncomfortable with this growing police state and relocated to Canada until 2006. About 1 1/2 years after 9/11, the US along with some allies had already invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. 
This film shows clear evidence that many architects and engineers were reluctant to challenge the governments flimsy excuses and reports by government agencies that gave approval to the official story of 9/11. They were intimidated into silence by the Deep State which controls nearly everything in the USA. Only after a decade did these professionals become involved and started to challenge the obvious inconsistencies and unscientific justifications of the official story.

Monday, September 14, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, Sept. 14, 2020

The film, Social Dilemma, a production by Netflix corporation, begins with an opening quote by Sophocles "Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse." and ends with the statement "Let's have a conversation about fixing it.". Nothing in between in the more than 133 minutes of the film addresses the fundamental and critical problem that needs to be "fixed" (or replaced)--capitalism. Various technology experts in the film casually mention that the present technology of social media serves to persuade people to buy products, for ulterior political aims, and to manipulate people to create more profits for the giant technology corporations. But that's it. They obviously cannot connect these effects to the system of capitalism.
Throughout the film we follow the life of a social media addict and his behaviors that are affected by this addiction. But, mostly he does like most addicts do: succumb to his addiction by being distant from his family, inattention at school, and poor self-esteem. The film provides disturbing information that social media corporations like Facebook, Google, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. are causing, and the many adverse effects on mostly young people: increasing suicide rates among young users, poor performance at school, deleterious effects on family cohesion, etc.

The message is clear for the audience of the film: technology is the problem and those who have created it need to fix it. These technologists recommend a few specific fixes such as greater regulation of social media corporations, parents limiting the time allowed for young people to use social media, etc., but nothing related to the underlying system of capitalism.

To be sure, not only social media has caused serious problems, but the whole internet technology as directed by capitalist bosses has caused serious problems. What these technologist-speakers fail to uncover is the man-made system of capitalism that has brought this "curse" to societies, instead the film focuses on the devastating effects of social media on mostly young people, and methods to "fix" them so that they can reduce the harmful effects.
 
These technologists-speakers are the perfect product of the ruling capitalist class whose control of every institution--education, media, entertainment, etc.--has ensured that they remain oblivious to the underlying system of capitalism that controls the use of social media to promote an increase profits of capitalists and their control of society.

Back in the 1980s technologists were initially fascinated with its promise to enrich people's lives by making access to information more convenient, connecting people instantly to friends and loved ones separated by hundreds of miles, and managing their daily affairs so conveniently. They initially saw this technology as simply "so cool" to be involved with. In the early years, they accomplished much and the future looked promising.

However, the ruling capitalist class began to see that this technology could be harnessed to reap greater profits, provide greater surveillance on potential troublemakers, and enable 24/7 propaganda to ensure that their subjects receive the “right” information about what was happening in the world. They slowly, but deliberately, set about to develop this technology to serve these interests, and Silicon Valley took off. Now that they have introduced artificial intelligence (AI) to radically increase the harmful effects on young people, the effects of social media look frightening. 
Meanwhile, as social media technology developed, the ruling class continued the ongoing indoctrination of capitalist values and discouraged the belief that any other system was even possible. Thus, these former young innovative technologists, like all Americans, remained naively committed to capitalism as they got older. The indoctrination encouraged the belief that no other system was even possible. This film produced by Netflix corporation serves to ensure that these technology "fixers" and the general audience remain in ignorance.
  • America’s “Good” Wars by Alan Johnstone from Dissident Voice. (Although he uses little documentation to back up his history of WWII, he clearly knows his history. I have read widely about WWII and can verify his history of the war. This history is largely unknown to Americans because they have been so subject to the Empire's propaganda about this war, and all the other wars since.)

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020

(Note: The post introduces the main characters, Ron Paul and Robert Kennedy, Jr. and supplies this nearly 40 minute interview. Kennedy, with his encyclopedic knowledge about the important questions Paul asked, tends to use up all the time in the interview with his detailed knowledge. Paul has to cut him off in order to finish his questions. 
Paul is a classic American libertarian in that his political orientation of  national capitalism, but it is an outmoded (by neoliberalism) ideology that was quite fashionable up until WWII. Since then the neoliberalism of transnational capitalists, that rule the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, see the whole world "as their oyster" to develop the way they want (to increase their wealth and power) without inference from political party or any nation. American libertarians see the government as a threat to their laissez faire ideology and do not recognize any entity above the government, such as the Deep State. They share this view with many anarchists. The far left was purged from the American political scene shortly after WWII as a part of the drive to establish the Deep State's Empire. This purge of the "old left" was very well described by Bruce Lerro.)

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020

  • Plandemic II: Indoctornation from ISE. (Note: Because I don't want to take your time to listen to excessive ramblings of commentators and analysts, I rarely post videos over one hour. The videos I post must give important insights on current major problems.) My commentary follows below:
This is a 1hr and 15min video that sums up numerous points made on my website that concentration wealth, that the capitalist system promotes, creates enormous private power that overwhelms and corrupts not only industries, but governments particularly within the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. In the 21st century this power mostly takes the form of control of media, that is, the news and information you receive by media corporations that ruling classes control. The latter also control careers and jobs which sustain families within the nations of the Empire. In the case of the current covid-19 virus, this power has influenced even UN agencies to collude with the Empire's ruling class concentrated wealth.

Monday, July 20, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, July 20, 2020

Although this article concentrates on one bank, it is clear that the author only points to Goldman Sachs as an example of major banks and corporations in the USA as an example of the wide effects on different social-economic classes in the USA, "the land of the free and the home of the brave".
Although I am aware of the social and economic inequalities of my existance in the USA, I learned much more from reading a book entitled The Capitalists of the 21st Century. I also learned that I was unaware of the full extent that transnational capitalists have enriched and empowered themselves at the expense of ordinary US citizens. And, the same is becoming true to citizens throughout the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. 
When you read this book, you will learn about major self-serving capital organizers--BlackRock appears to be the worst--that have owned governments throughout the Empire, regard corporations as commadities to bet on in their casino on Wall Street, that have created news corpoations as propaganda organs, and as a result are imposing enormous suffering on ordinary people. This book explains why top members of this ruling class regard ordinary people, who they have brainwashed and lied to (the biggest lie is that they pretend to care about our health), as "dumb fucks" and "deplorables". These "giant vampire squids" that have tentacles in all our institutions are quite different from the major corporations and banks that ruled most of the world in the 20th century. 
I won't do a review of the book because Norbert Häring has already done this for me, but I have added it to my recommended list of books and I urge you to read it.
(Note: To my consternation, my paperback does not include an index, and I am unable to determine if a hardback edition contains an index or not.)
  • CoronaShock and Socialism from Tricontinental and re-posted by Titanic Lifeboat Academy, a sister website. (Note: I thank an activist for alerting me to this fine article.) My reaction: The contrast regarding the effects of the coronavirus pandemic in other countries with mixed economies to what is happening in the USA is stark. Not only people in these countries are suffering very limited effects of the virus, but they are not suffering the economic and social effects that people in the advanced capitalist country like the USA are suffering.
Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris assemble the evidence of the Deep State's obsessive effort to remove the Trump administration, but they do not point to a "Deep State", the real government of the USA. They go on in a dramatic fashion to point to "plotters" that are creating an "existential crisis" for the US government and the American people. They miss the greater significance of internecine strife among the capitalist ruling class because the American people voted the wrong way in 2016 for the chief executive officer of the USA. Because of this obsession with Donald Trump, a renegade capitalist who refuses to take orders from the Deep State, the latter are now pursuing a reckless course of action with the Covid-19 pandemic (among other reasons) to undermine his chances for re-election in November's elections.)
The US-Ukraine Foundation hosted notorious neo-Nazi militant Diana Vynohradova in a webinar this month. While legitimizing Ukrainian white supremacists, the think tank has forged close ties with foreign policy elites in Washington. 

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.)

Friday, April 24, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend and a commentary for today: Friday, April 24, 2020

My commentary after viewing the film entitled Planet of the Humans last night: (Editing for greater clarification was made at 8:56 PM CT.)

Basically, Jeff Gibbs concludes that humans are doomed, and he cites three explanations to account for this: 1) We humans cannot and have not faced the fact that we are like all other creatures and life forms--we are only temporary. Although in an unequal fashion we have excelled in controlling the environment to serve the needs of certain humans, this led to the second problem. 2) Our population has skyrocketed during the past few centuries that has caused the contamination of the Earth's ecosystem. 3) The profit system or capitalism has driven us to produce all kinds of stuff that is overwhelming the Earth's ecosystem. In the final moments of the film he circles back to the first theme. 

What ties these themes together is the attack of the Green Movement and their outlandish promises of solving the obviously developing degradation of the environment and, most especially, global warming.

The attack on the obvious failings of the Green Movement provides a variety of thinkers (Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Rockefeller Foundation, liberals like Michael Moore, anti-capitalists, and followers of Cory Morningstar and Wrong Kind of Green website) reasons to support the film. The Green Movement has promoted fake solutions that have helped to convince people that solar power, wind power, and the burning of biomass could save us. In the film these are revealed as nothing less than foolhardy solutions. Gibbs exaggerates this argument in order to thoroughly demolish the Green's proposals. He makes them look ridiculous. This is not entirely the case, but the outlandish promises made by the Green Movement led to this attack. The problem was the ruling capitalist class.
 

Although Gibbs does not make this explicitly clear, the Green Movement was corrupted by capitalists who infiltrated this movement in order to integrate it with their primary interests of profit and power. He is right in his belief that other humans needed to sustain their false belief in their immortality and rather easily succumbed to the enticements offered by the capitalist ruling classes. But who continued supporting religions in spite of man-made science that was uncovering the secrets of nature? Capitalist ruling classes. Like all ruling classes they soon learned the benefits of co-opting and modified them so that the Greens didn't interfere in their quest for power--the domination of others who would serve their needs of material comforts.

The capitalist class has always put their faith in the accumulation of wealth after discovering that wealth gave them power to dominate others. This faith was strengthened after discovering that they could use science to accumulate even greater wealth. However, capitalists also were disturbed by this existential problem of their mortality, so they turned to the solution offered by the feudal ruling class that they replaced--inheritance laws in which the accumulation of wealth and power in their families could be reproduced indefinitely in their descendants. This gave them a sense of immortality which most humans crave. Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of Britain, expressed this succinctly when she said that there was no such thing as society, only families.


As a critique of the Green Movement it succeeds, but it fails as an ultimate explanation for the growing recognition of our demise as humans. It satisfies capitalists in that it legitimatizes efforts to reduce global populations (but not theirs); it satisfies anti-capitalists as a critique of capitalism, and lastly the film satisfies those (mostly religious figures) who see human weakness (self-fulfilling argument) as the real cause of the extinction of humans. But could this failure be necessary in order to obtain the funding and support necessary to finance the film from such a variety of sources?
  • Capitalism and the Illusion of Democracy by Rob Urie from CounterPunch. (Note: Although the author makes some good points about "democratic" elections, he employs the term "state capitalism" to describe the present system in the USA and the Empire. What does this term mean? He doesn't define it. Might it mean by inference that the oligarchy controls the government? And further, could he by implication be arguing for small capitalism that existed 150 years ago? If so, this is a silly argument. Capitalism always develops by consolidating wealth and power in ever greater concentrations.)
  •  Earth Day, Live Hope Presentation 2020 featuring Guy McPherson (via YouTube) building his argument that we are on the edge of abrupt climate change and global dimming, he reviews many scientific studies. Along the way he also explains the concept of "global dimming" in which reduced industrial activity results in even more global warming. McPherson elucidates this topic in the context of an opportunity to fully appreciate life in the current moment.