Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, March 9, 2021

• Vaccine Diabolus and the Impending Wave of Rare Neurodegenerative Disorders by Mike Whitney from Global Research.
  

Is it the reputable scientists, virologists, epidemiologists and other medical experts who don’t have a stake in the outcome and who base their judgements on the science alone, or is it the conflicted state bureaucrats, the public health toadies and the billionaire activists who control the media and whose shadowy and sinister motives are still not clear?

Most people know the answer to that question already. It’s obvious.

• No COVID Vaccine? No Travel, Air Force Officials Say by Pam Long from Children's Health Defense. 

• The Brutal Attack on Scientific Dissent by Paul E. Alexander from American Institute for Economic Research. (Note: It would be helpful to know what "Age of Lysenkoism" means.)

• Perspectives on the Pandemic: "The Illusion of Evidence Based Medicine" from Journeyman Pictures, based in Britain, featuring author and professor Leemon McHenry, PhD explains why articles in prominent medical journals have been corrupted by the profit interests of giant pharmaceutical industries.

• Another Independent News Show Gets Shut Down. This 13:51m YouTube video features Jimmy Dore and a guest Kit Cabello whose channel has been censored by YouTube. My reaction: It's amazing why Dore's channel hasn't been censored. My hunch is that he has a very large following. 

• Enforcing Orthodoxy by Patrick Lawrence from Consortium News. (Note: Based on another example of ruling class censorship (Consortium News), Lawrence comments on the significance of censorship.)
  

• Reclaiming Our Common Home by Vandana Shiva from Yes!. My reaction: I think that the basic needs of humans must be equitably shared. But at the same time, humans must learn about the fact that they are one of a vast number of species in the web of life on planet Earth, and act responsibly. Neither one of my conditions will be met as long as self-serving classes rule over humans. From scientific reports I've read during the past 45 years, I think that humans living in class-structured societies have not acted responsibly and they will become extinct as well as many other species on our exceptional planet Earth.
  

• Wherefore Art Thou Ghislaine Maxwell? And who are your friends? by Philip Giraldi from The Unz Review.

• Biden and the ‘Yellow Brick Road’ by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation (based in Russia but international in scope). (Note: "4IR" means "fourth industrial revolution" which was announced by Klaus Schwab by the Great Reset. The latter is a project decided by our masters, the billionaires in the transnational capitalist ruling class of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.)

Crooke writes:

 

America’s position as ‘global leader’, Stephen Wertheim has observed in his book Tomorrow the World, was premised on a set of impermanent and atypical post-war circumstances that handed primacy to the U.S.; but Wertheim then goes on to underscore how “those days of incontestable unipolarity are over, and cannot be wished back”. The U.S. empire is, then, at an impasse: Its moral and political justification of overseeing a global order shaped to its norms is now beyond its capabilities (militarily or financially) to maintain.

 

His view differs from mine in that he sees only an American empire, whereas I see the reality of a transnational capitalist empire built on the ruins of the former British Empire combined with the military power of the USA and extended by their combined power over numerous other nations, primarily Europe and Israel. This is the history since WWII of the development of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire which has largely replaced the Nazi ambitions of the Third Reich. 

 

However, in the end Crooke returns to the political dynamics of the USA to imply that most Americans simply want to return to "normal" and will not go along with this delusional agenda. Although his metaphor using "Alice in Wonderland" is clever, I don't think this implication is accurate. I don't see that ordinary Americans will become a significant factor in the future. I believe that too many Americans have been so brainwashed by fake history, capitalist culture, and the advantages that Americans have enjoyed since WWII to be an effective actor in the future. I also believe that our present ruling class suffer from a dangerous delusion, one among many others, of omnipotence that will make the near future much more dangerous than what Crooke suggests.

• U.S. Launches New Afghanistan Initiative Which Is Unlikely To Fly by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama. (Note: He brings us up-to-date on efforts by the US State Department to get US official forces out of Afghanistan.)

["The Biden regime"] needs some face saving period of 'peace in Afghanistan' to justify a pull out. It also wants to keep some CIA counter-terrorism force in the country which is something the Taliban are unlikely to allow.

• Govt-Linked CSIS Urges DC To Partner with Social Media Firms To “Promote Protests Movements” by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News.
  

• Excessive Wealth Disorder is Destroying Our Societies by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room.

• Introduction: Self-Reinforcing Feedback Loops featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson (in a 2:27m YouTube video), a scientist who has specialized on the near-term climate destabilization crisis.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, March 31, 2020

• COVID-19 Crisis Positive Side Effects: End of Dog-Eat-Dog Civilization? by Gilbert Mercier from News Junkie Post. 

• The Pandemic and the End of the Neoliberal Era by Atilio A. Boron from Internationalist 360°.

My commentary to both above articles: To be sure, the pandemic is wrecking havoc on the capitalist system (neoliberalism is only the current developmental phase); but as effective as the pandemic will be in damaging the capitalist system, it looks to me that it is only a dress rehearsal for the inevitable extinction of most life on our planet Earth due to global warming caused by excessive and obsessive industrial that capitalism demands. The cessation of industrial activities during this pandemic will only hasten rising temperatures as explained by Guy McPherson. But at least this pandemic makes it possible in the near future for humans to gain greater dignity by realizing that their economic system is responsible for this cataclysmic end. I believe that this realization is the best we can hope for, and humans can partially redeem themselves if they can establish socialist institutions in socialist societies before their demise.                                                                          

• China Boasts 93% Recovery Rate, No New Cases in Hubei for Sixth Day After Saying Local Covid-19 Spread ‘Stopped’ by Drago Bosnic from FRN (Fort Russ News).

• The profit system is sabotaging the struggle against the coronavirus by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site. 

• Brave Republican Stands Against Stimulus ALONE. This post features an agitated Jimmy Dore who is struggling with disillusionment over so-called progressives in a political system that was constructed by the ruling capitalist class. But he is making progress to come up with some more effective strategies to attack this class and for the benefit of workers. If you like this post, you might be interested in another post by Jimmy Dore who shows what's now happening in Sicily could easily happen in the USA. 

• The coronavirus: Two opposing worlds by Onur Sinan Güzaltan from United World (based in Turkey). 

• Kushner Squeezes Tenants While Lining Up for Bailout Money by Alexander Sammon from The American Prospect.

Articles recommended for Tuesday, August 27, 2019

• Lies of the Victors by Jason Hirthler from Dissident Voice.

• What Will It Take To Declare A Climate Emergency? by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers from Dissident Voice.

• Capitalists contra workers by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

• How To Make Sense Of Foreign Protests, Conflicts And Uprisings by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Ecosystems and ecological breakdown submitted by UK Youth Climate Coalition from Ecologist (Britain).

The Myth of Liberal Policing

Click here to access an approximately 52 minute interview with Alex Vitale, Assoc. Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College, NY City from the studios of KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, California. (Note: if you access this interview at any other than the "Listen" link, the interview and program entitled "Against the Grain" starts at 5:33m.)

Each week brings another tragic account of the police injuring or killing someone, usually poor and of color.  So shouldn’t we support reforms to make the police more accountable? Alex Vitale has a surprising answer.  The sociologist discusses how liberal police reforms legitimize an illegitimate institution.  He argues instead that the reform we should get behind is reducing the number of police.

The professor supplies an excellent history of the origins of police forces used in Western countries. Like any good sociology professor he places the origins and the entire history of Western policing in the context of capitalist systems, but he doesn't do this very well directly. Rather he does it mostly implicitly in such a way as to protect him from crossing a red line of attacking the capitalist system which our masters in the ruling class do not tolerate. Otherwise his teaching career, or at least tenure, would be put in jeopardy. At the end of the program he does offers some progressive solutions, but they are all methods that are strictly within the acceptance of capitalism. The fact that they are so difficult to implement belies belief that such measures can be significantly introduced in a society such as ours than is heading in the direction of fascism.

Although there is more or less token allegiance to liberal practices historically in the US or in other capitalist countries, this appearance has to do with the historical origins of capitalism and its espousal of "democratic" propaganda to obtain the allegiance of the lower classes by the rising capitalist classes in order to overthrow the established feudal ruling classes. Thus fascist rule is capitalist rule without this fake liberal ideological element. However, police forces are expensive to maintain, therefore advanced capitalist ruling classes also put a lot of investment in organs of indoctrination and perception management. With the US going in a fascist direction, such reform measures that he suggests are all but impossible to implement. Hence our ruling class has placed far more resources in brutal police forces. Revolution is the only real solution!

Although many thinking people can recognize this insight regarding police forces as an institution that protects the ruling capitalist class, but they have a harder time recognizing that this is true of every institution (justice, media, education, entertainment, health care, etc) of all capitalist societies to a lessor or greater extent.  

If Workers Take Power:

Click here to access article by Stephanie McMillan from Workers Power.

She sees what could be if we, the people, owned and managed the economy.

Safety Nets

by Khalil Bendib from Other Words.

Wall Streeters land just fine, but kids in dire poverty slip right through.

Some Possible Programmatic Ideas

Click here to access article from ZNet.

It seems that during presidential election years all the liberal-leftists are inspired by an approved liberal candidate (this election year it is Sen. Bernie Sanders) to formulate a new "radical" agenda which turns out to be a reform of the capitalist system to make it a kinder, gentler capitalism (an oxymoron). Such is the agenda in this piece and endorsed by many such people. (Yesterday I posted a European version of a reformist agenda.)

I've seen these come and go (after every election) every four years for the last 60 years. The capitalist ruling class love all the excitement they can muster regarding their well-managed elections. It helps to legitimate them by collecting and encouraging all the disillusioned people to participate in them. 

I really don't like to sound cynical, and I'm really not. I just hate to see these quadrennial feasts of reformist illusions. I am thoroughly convinced by personal experience and history that capitalism cannot be reformed. (Read this post's commentary.) The best reforms in American history were accomplished during the FDR administration in the 1930s that promoted New Deal policies. This was after a devastating Wall Street crash and world-wide economic collapse, the emergence of many truly radical movements in the US, and only 16 years after the first workers' revolution in Russia that established the Soviet Union. US capitalists were shaking in their boots over the threat that the radical movements posed to their rule. Thus they--and not without vigorous dissent and an attempted coup--permitted F. Roosevelt to hold office and work his mild reformist policies into the fabric of government to reduce the pressure from these popular movements.

The only way to create social justice and to live sustainably with nature is to abolish the rule of capitalists and put an end to their system. They will never permit their system to be significantly reformed. Thus the construction of a serious movement to overthrow their rule must be undertaken everyday for at least the next decade to end this cancer that will destroy us all if we fail. As you can imagine, this effort will require a lot more than showing up on one day to vote for the latest Bernie Sanders in capitalist controlled elections.

Capitalism = homelessness

Click here to access article by Stephen Millies from Workers World. 

The author reviews much of the housing history of the US, including attempts to fund public housing, to illustrate how even a fundamental need such as housing cannot be met in a socially just way by an economy governed by capitalist principles simply because under capitalism profits always take precedence over vital social needs.

Real America, an Endangering and Endangered Ruination

Click here to access article by Gary Brumback from Uncommon Thought Journal.

Gary Brumback is obviously an older American who, like myself, has watched the American nation slowly deteriorate into something that looks like a fascist government: extreme inequality and authoritarian imperial government built on the foundation of corporations to serve the megalomania of a tiny segment of our society. 

I once believed in the old saying that things would have to get worse before they can get better. I've been waiting for forty years for this to happen, and I am wondering if it ever will, and especially before I reach my expiry date.

This article is not pleasant reading. It shares with younger people the profound dismay that older activists such as myself have who have watched the US sink ever deeper into the swamp of fascism. In the second half of the essay Brumback tries to be more affirmative by sharing with us what he thought was necessary to turn things in a positive direction (his "Alter America campaign"). Having failed at this campaign, at his advanced age Brumback sees the necessity of passing the mantle of activism to younger generations to come up with their solutions.

If there is any merit to the proposed Alter America campaign the most compelling question becomes how to jump-start it. I am at a loss for an answer. My previous answers and attempts have all failed. I may have some cache within a relatively small professional niche but none outside it. I am easily ignored. I have never been able to coax luminaries into helping me implement my proposals. Now, at my age, I am going to leave the matter entirely up to others if any are interested.

Learning from the life of Murray Bookchin

Click here to access article by Eirik Eiglad from Reflections on a Revolution (ROAR).

Eiglad presents a review of a new book entitled Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin by his companion of 20yrs, Janet Biehl. He makes reference to the title of this review with this statement: 

This book, however, is not only for the initiated. It deserves to be read by anyone who would like to know more about American radicalism in the last century, or learn more about the genealogy of social ecology.

And reaches this conclusion:

Biehl’s book presents a lucid overview and a lively introduction to Bookchin and the emergence of social ecology.

Council of monkeys – 12 exhibits comparing the U.S. to other countries

Click here to access article by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

Business people and investors in the United States have a reputation, even after the spectacular crash of 2008, to be worldly, no-nonsense, bring-it-on types. They’re supposed to know what is going on in the world and to react to the news with dispatch, making the hard decisions that lead to efficient outcomes.

However, they’re actually like a council of monkeys, sitting on a pile of cash: hear no bad news, see no bad news, speak no bad news.

After these opening remarks, Ruccio proceed to tell them the bad news portrayed in dramatic fashion by the series of graphs. The graphs also illustrate why the US can engage in so many wars (either directly or indirectly), spend so much on weapons, and maintain around a 1000 military installations overseas. To me they also are another indication of why Americans put up with second-class citizenship among developed nations: instead of hard data like this, their reality is created for them by corporate media. All they have to do is flip on the "on" switch to their boob-tubes.

However, I must take issue with Ruccio about his "council of monkeys" metaphor. To be sure many capitalist advisers are chronically optimistic for various reasons, but the top ones who are our ruling directors are not stupid. They want their wave-slaves to believe in the system and the future despite all the evidence (like the evidence presented in the graphs which wage-slaves never see) to the contrary.

Welfare Queens

by cartoonist Mike Luckovich

No Climate Protection without Climate Justice; No Climate Justice without Degrowth

Click here to access article by Christiane Kliemann from degrowth (Germany).

And as the German author apparently argues, there can be no "degrowth" without ending the capitalist system and rule by capitalists.

To be able to successfully develop a different type of growth, the countries of the South will require their fair share of the global resources and emissions – which must be much more than the leftovers of the rich North. By consequence the Global North will have to drastically reduce its emissions and resource exploitation. This is, however, impossible within the framework of continuous capitalist economic growth. ....

...we can’t simply rely on technological progress without overhauling the whole economic, social and political environment this progress is embedded in. As many examples in history show, purely technological solutions tend to relocate their negative effects to other sectors, ecosystems or continents, or from the present to the future.

However, I'm not so sure she means this. Maybe like Naomi Klein she thinks that we can simply regulate capitalism better so that we don't have continuous growth.

An Institution of Oppression or for Public Well-Being and Civil Rights? Reflections on the Institution of Police and a Radical Alternative

Click here to access article by R.C. Smith from Heathwood Institute and Press.  

Smith makes the case that reforms to a bad system cannot result in significant change. Only a radical change in the social system can produce alternative modes of "policing". Later he provides some examples of what these alternatives might look like.

It is a mistake, in seeking police reform, to limit one’s campaign solely to the institution of police. Groups engaged in anti-oppression and racial struggle, like those engaged in anti-capitalist struggle, share in one way or another a common universal struggle against a system which runs against the well-being of all, against the prospect of actual democracy, equality and egalitarianism. This is not to take anything away from the particular suffering, conflict and fight experienced by black communities across the US. If Chris Hedges is right, moreover, in his observation that the “discontent in Ferguson, Athens, Cairo, Madrid and Ayotzinapa” and now Baltimore “is one discontent”, this is because the fundamental source of injustice that unites them all is an unjust social-political, economic system.

.... modern democracy, as a concept and as a thing, has always had less to do with the actual content of “democracy” as an egalitarian system of political-economic values than with the neglect of this content for its (mere) form. The concept of democracy today is really the leftover after the actual content (Equality, Egalitarianism, Justice, Rights, etc.) has been boiled away. This sentiment is expressed most clearly on the streets, where the chant ‘there can be no democracy in capitalism’ is frequently voiced.

Re-imagining the future of work

Click here to access article by Rhiannon Colvin from openDemocracy. 

This extract from a book entitled Resist! Against a precarious future provides some visions about how society could be organized to serve everyone in society instead of what now exists--serving only those few who "own" part of society--the economy. While reading this and other articles like this, I question whether such ideas are merely exercises in fantasy to detract from effective revolutionary activities, to encourage a belief that one can simply create such egalitarian institutions within a society that is organized to serve the needs of one tiny, but very powerful class. 

The answer that I arrive at is frequently the same: there are many paths to a future of social justice and a sustainable economy, and there are many people who will take these paths. No one path guarantees success, but many people going down many promising paths can add up to a better future. What is dead certain is that simply doing nothing in the way of radical social change is no longer a serious option. Human survival now makes social change of the greatest urgency. Before we choose a path, we must ask ourselves if the path's activities can somehow contribute toward the construction of a new society, the realization of an egalitarian and sustainably society, a society designed for the benefit of all that can exist within the natural limits of our planet. 

Low wages don’t come cheap

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder.

Fast-food workers, child care workers and home care workers are heavily represented among those who depend on public assistance to supplement their subpar wages — about half of all the employees in these three industries. That is no surprise. What might be surprising is the increasing prevalence of this in “white-collar” fields. Twenty-five percent of adjunct college professors receive public assistance! So much for “lack of education” as the cause of stagnant or falling wages, as right-wing apologists for growing inequality like to claim.

Dolack provides us with the findings of research from the U. of California (Berkeley) which proves what many workers especially in service industries already know from personal experience. Yes, these are the effects of an advanced capitalist economy where the concentration of wealth equals concentration of power. Thus, the inevitability of tax havens for the rich, subsidies to corporations, never-ending wars to feed the military-industrial complex, and the export of jobs to cheap labor areas of the world causing high unemployment and low wages and home. To add insult to injury, because the rich pay less than their share of taxes, the burden of supporting low wage workers largely falls on higher wage workers.

An Essay on Collectivist Economics

Click here to access article by Bruno Lima Rocha from Conjuncture.

About the author: 

Bruno Lima Rocha has a PhD and MSc in political science, is a professor and researcher in geopolitics-strategic studies and international political economy. Bruno teaches at 2 universities located in the Brazilian southern state.

The essay suffers a little from an awkward translation, but I don't think you will have much difficulty in understanding it. I think it represents an excellent preliminary work as a part of a vital project that needs to be expanded if we humans are to overcome the ravages of capitalism and create a world that is sustainable, socially just, and peaceful.

This essay is the beginning of an attempt to develop a left libertarian approach toward an economic model, specifically to a model which is compatible with the political formations of Democratic Confederalism, also referred to as Libertarian Municipalism. At this stage the goal is the development of a working set of tools of analysis, and foster learning among the Libertarian Left. To this end I submit this relatively simple text to provide accessible notions for those struggling to build a society based on Democratic Confederalism.

.... We start with the analysis of some [eight] premises that may provide direction and parameters to the discussion.

OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot

Click here to access the introduction to this book by the author William Ryerson, president of Population Media Center and CEO of the Population Institute. Posted on Post Carbon Institute.

Early in the introduction Ryerson writes:

Many of us today do recognize that the Earth and its resources are limited, yet too many people still cling to the notion that modern science and technology will enable us to defy physical limits. In the Middle Ages, alchemists sought in vain for a “philosopher’s stone” that would convert base metals into gold. They never succeeded. Why? Because what they were looking for did not, and could not, exist, because its existence would have violated the physical laws governing the universe.

It's clear that he recognizes that we live on a finite planet, but he still proposes the same solution, direct population control methods, that have been tried for many decades with little in the way of results to show for this type of program. I accuse him of looking toward a solution that defies social laws or realities that govern human societies. I'm referring to the lack of social justice in class structured societies that undermines the health and safety of its citizens. This I firmly believe is a well-guarded secret that social scientists in capitalist societies refuse to acknowledge for reasons that I will shortly explain.

I was first tipped off about this secret fact by a professor who specialized in population studies. I went to her back in the late 1970s because I wanted to take her course which was officially filled up. In one part of our interview she disclosed to me in rather hushed tones that existing population controls methods were missing the point of the reasons for the resistance by the targeted populations: large families were necessary to provide social supports for families that were otherwise missing in class structured societies. It is possible to find such documented evidence to support this argument, but one must look hard and long in population studies to find it. I quote one such source, page five from a book by Mohammed Sharif entitled Poverty Reduction - An Effective Means of Population Control:

There are studies that show that children are not liabilities but assets to poor parents--they contribute to the family's current income and provide old-age security to the parents [he lists eight such studies]. Children, especially male children begin working at age as early as six year and by age 12 they completely pay off to their parents the total cost of their upbringing and in additions enough to cover the cost for one of their siblings [cites one study]. This suggest that larger the number of children, the greater is the net income for the parents and higher is the standard of living.

In the absence of any organized system of social security, during old age parents have to depend on supports from their children. This is especially so because people who live by the day and have no assets other than their physical labor are unable to save for their old age.

Hence it is clear that the only real solution for over-population is a people's revolution to insure that their societies are run "of, by, and for the people". It is for that reason that this secret must be suppressed by capitalist authorities and that capitalist controlled websites such as Post Carbon Institute like to run such articles while ignoring the evidence that these programs don't work.

Climate Justice and Degrowth: a tale of two movements

Click here to access article by Tadzio Müller from degrowth (Germany).

In the run-up to last year’s United Nations Climate Conference in Lima, Peru, a particular headline kept popping up, an attempt to once again establish a particular meme in the mind of global elites as well as wider populations: friends, the line goes, you’re right to worry about climate change, but...what you really, really shouldn’t do, is start believing that worrying about climate change should make you worry about trying to end economic growth’. Economic growth, so the story goes once again, can in fact be made to work very nicely with climate protection, if only it’s done the right way.

Müller examines the differences between the two movements and then finds a common path that both can merge on that can effectively fight the above position of capitalist elites.

Researchers figured out when companies think about replacing workers with robots

Click here to access article by Lewis Krauskopf of Reuters via Business Insider.

Companies tend to start thinking about replacing workers when the costs of owning and operating a system come at a 15 percent discount to employing a human counterpart.

This, of course, is great news for the "owners" of the robots. What would otherwise be a blessing for humankind has, in fact, become a curse under the system of capitalism which benefits only a few people called owners, capitalists, or investors. These robots will be bring even more wealth and power to this tiny segment of humanity, and the chasm between them and us will grow even wider than it is now.

If, instead, all technology and its applications were correctly viewed as a heritage handed down over the generations of workers who steadily improved them, then we would see robots publicly owned as well as the wealth that is produced. Workers would be liberated from mind-numbing, monotonous tasks to enjoy an abundance of leisure time to pursue a variety of meaningful activities that would enrich the lives of everyone, and they would enjoy these pursuits without fearing poverty.