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 LappĂ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Posts I especially recommend for today: Saturday, October 12, 2019 (updated)

  • We're in a permanent coup by Matt Taibbi from his private weblog. (He apparently doesn't know that we've had a semi-overt coup since the murder of JFK, and this coup was a culmination of preparations that neo-fascists have planned since the American Century was announced in 1940.)

Friday, October 11, 2019

Posts I especially recommend for today: Friday, October 11, 2019

  • No Class by John Steppling from Dissident Voice.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Posts that I especially recommend for today: Tuesday, October 8, 2019

  • Trump Fails to Gain the Confidence of North Korea from Radio Sputnik. "Journalist and author Stephen Gowans [a Canadian] joined Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary [a podcast program from Sputnik Int.] Monday to discuss how the US is failing to build the much-needed confidence of North Korea that’s necessary to strike a working deal on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula."

Monday, October 7, 2019

Posts I recommend for today: Monday, October 7, 2019

  • Udo Ulfkotte: Bought Journalists. Terje Maloy, a Norwegian, translated into English 49 minutes of the 136 minute lecture delivered to a German audience in 2015 by former German journalist Udo Ulfkotte. Maloy then posted it on his website which occasionally includes posts in English.

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Posts that I especially recommend for today: Sunday, October 6, 2019

Funding The Climate Breakdown : How can it be stopped?

Click here to access an 11:17m video from Just Have a Think via YouTube.

I think this latest installment from Just Have a Think is an excellent example of what Cory Morningstar has thoroughly exposed about capitalism's funding of reform efforts to subvert the protests concerning the climate crisis. Note particularly what Dave Borlace, the narrator, says about selecting "our banks" who will in turn, presumably because of our influence, fund efforts at mitigating the crisis. Absolute nonsense! Yes, they will set up some banks for this purpose, but meanwhile the major banks will continue to do business as usual.  And if we are fooled, we will see an increasing climate and environmental deterioration which will eventually end in the extinction of human and most other species.

I don't know if the narrator is a naive dupe or whether he is consciously serving the ruling capitalist classes. But I do know that privately owned banks, which make up the Federal Reserve and control it, do not serve the general public in our societies, but only one tiny part of it--the ruling capitalist class.

I repudiate my recommendation that you subscribe to this YouTube channel as I previously recommended in the last paragraph of the post on September 27, 2019.

Thursday, October 3, 2019

Other articles I found today, October 3, 2019, and recommend to you

‘March of anger’: Thousands of cops protest in Paris over working conditions, pension reforms & suicides

Click here to access article and videos posted on RT

French cops are protesting about the neglectful treatment by their government. This is another variation on the fatal flaw that I temporarily referred to in my abortive post on 9/28/2019 (I intend to finish this and post it under "General Information" in the upper right-hand corner of my website.)" Before I decided to abbreviate the post and to develop the idea further in the future, it read (in part): 
I've reached the conclusion that the human species are largely ruled by [individualistic] materialism in the sense that they follow their instincts toward pleasure or positive reinforcement in the short term future. This is a fatal flaw that condemns this species to extinction along with many other life forms on this planet.
This morality has not only infected the thinking of the current ruling capitalist classes, but all class structured societies when they began some 10,000 years ago when humans settled in agricultural communities and there was a surplus of wealth produced. Class structured societies began to be developed whereby ruling classes appropriated for themselves and their families the surplus. They abandoned the morality of survival of the nomadic band and replaced it with the morality of what's best for the extended family, and this new morality passed down through our species' relatively brief history to our current ruling capitalist classes. This new morality was very well expressed by Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister who said
...you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first.
Now in the present day, humans are increasingly threatened with extinction by their excessive alteration of the climate and environment. To survive, the relatively recent morality must be abandoned in favor of the earlier one and expanded to the human species and toward life forms in general. Humans must realize that they are an integral part of the web of life that exists on this unique planet Earth. The cops in this post demonstrate the current dominant morality. But cops, and humans in general, don't have much time to move to the earlier morality. So, will they succeed, or perish along with many other species? Stay tuned, but better yet, stay active in favor of survival.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Articles I especially recommend for Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Where Are the Indictments of Those Implicated in the Coup Attempt Against Trump?

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his weblog.

Added to this smear campaign against Donald Trump by NPR was performed by America's Public Broadcast Service (PBS) during a two hour anti-Trump barrage about Saudi Arabia which I viewed last night on television. They made sure that Trump was identified with the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Obviously, PBS had all this programming prepared months and even some instances, years ahead of time. Is the timing coincidental coming after the Deep State decided to initiate impeachment proceedings against him because of his "crime" against their chosen candidate, Joe Biden? (This reminds me of the extraordinary efforts to elect Ronald Reagan.)

By the way, I don't go along with Roberts' loyalty to the Republican Party. Both parties, that we are allowed to vote for, represent the capitalist class and their opportunistic supporters, mostly well-paid upper-middle class people, who are indispensable for the system to function.

Misrepresentations of American & Soviet Roles in WWII and the Cold War

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation (an independent website in Russia).

Although in the past I've been irritated by Zuesse's use of "aristocracy" instead of "ruling class", I commend him for this accurate history of WWII. I have read considerable material related to WWII and his views on this subject correspond, with only minor exceptions, with my readings. I note that he now uses the proto-fascist term "Deep State" frequently in reference to the directors of the US ruling class--only once did he use "aristocracy". I highly approve.

I continue to be vexed by the lack of information on the web about Zuesse's lack of biography which might disclose his education and employment. He most often is referred to as an historian or investigative historian, but there are exceptions: see this and this

It's interesting that all those Western historians, geopolitical analysts, journalists, and informed others--and they are numerous--are allowed access to the world via Russian websites (RT, New Eastern Outlook, and this website) but not Western websites. It couldn't be censorship, could it?

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

‘How Dare You!’ The Climate Crisis And The Public Demand For Real Action

Click here to access article by the editor of Medialens from that website (British). 

(Note: I am only going to post this one article today because it offers, together with important links, so much important truths about today's humans and the crisis they face. I use the third person because I am near the end of my life and the third person offers an appropriate way to address those who come after me.)

I emphatically recommend that you do not skip the following links to important articles (that is, if you haven't already read, or listened to, them): Greta's recent speech to UNGA (my link), Greta Thunberg and the consolation of doubt, Greta Thunberg's Facebook statement earlier this year, the Ted talk she delivered in August 2018, "Something Drastic Has To Happen" with an interview by Roger Hallam on the BBC in August, 2019, and many others that I may have, in the rush to post this article, overlooked.  

Please do not misunderstand me by posting this article and commentary. I do not wish to discredit those people (especially Cory Morningstar) who have tried to expose the attempts by agents of the capitalist classes to co-opt her and thereby limit her influence. They immediately recognized how dangerous she was, but that doesn't mean they were successful. Also, I don't want you to hero-worship Greta Thunberg--that would be too easy. Rather you should take her message as another inspiration to become active in your locale to join with others to take down the system of capitalism, and the people defending it, that will inevitably result in the extinction of humans, that is, if you do nothing!

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Articles I especially recommend for today: Sunday, September 29, 2019

It’s the End of the World as They Know It

Click here to access article or a reading of the article by David Corn from Mother Jones. (Note: this is an exception to my usual policy of posting articles that are not more than a month old.)

The problem with most scientists is that they don't understand how most of our civilization functions: to serve a tiny class of capitalists under their system of capitalism. They don't understand this because they have been intentionally indoctrinated all of their lives in the virtues of this system. They have been lied to as well as the vast majority of climate activists as this account entitled "The fallacy of climate activism" written in over a decade ago attests. The author of the latter article at least was able to understand that "The answers lie not with science, but with culture." But this is answer is mind-boggling broad. 

The answer is quite simple, but at the same time, overwhelming: the system of capitalism, and those who benefit from it because they as capitalist ruling classes are in control of most of our very dominant cultures. These ruling classes face two choices: 1) they must destroy the system that delivers to them so much wealth and power or 2) continue with business as usual, remain in denial or try to control or co-opt the climate change movement to serve business as usual (profits and power). Which do you think they will choose? So, what is to be done?

Saturday, September 28, 2019

The Coverup of President John F. Kennedy’s Assassination Is Wearing Thin

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his weblog. (Note: I have decided (9/29/2019 at 1:20 PM CT) that my commentary is a major project for another time, but I did not find another time because dramatic events took over. Thus, I've edited out most of the original post.)

I place this event and the Deep State's portrayal of it along with the 9/11 tragedy and other major false-flag events contrived by them. Their portrayal of these events are thoroughly ridiculous, and thus I like the address Michael Parenti gave to a Berkeley (California) audience in 1993 (here and here) in which he ridiculed and entertained them with the stories that the authorities gave on the assassination of JFK.

Friday, September 27, 2019

A Few Words about the Climate Crisis

By Ron Horn

My political views come from my experience as a anti-war and social justice advocate and related studies in sociology. Thus I am not a climate scientist, not even a physical scientist. My training in university has been largely in political sociology, but I've learned so much more by independent reading and my anti-war and social justice activities. Since the 1970s when the Vietnam War was winding down, I knew that much was need to be done to clean up the environment, and naively hoped that popular pressure would urge our government (US) to do just that. Over the years since then I have been aware of the growing climate crisis that threatened most life of our planet Earth including our own species. Earlier I came to the conclusion that the system of capitalism was the source of most of the ills of the vast majority of humans, but I then realized that this included the growing climate crisis.

Because I am not a physical scientist I have devoted much less time and effort to the climate crisis than the issue of never-ending wars and social injustice. Over the years I have been astonished at the indifference displayed by my fellow Americans regarding the suffering that capitalism has caused for most humans. But now the very existence of humans is being threatened by the climate crisis and still this indifference exists to a startling degree. I cannot attribute this all to the success of the capitalist ruling class and their incessant propaganda and indoctrination. The old religions which has treated humans as an exceptional species guarded over by their imaginary gods have also contributed to this indifference.

In my weblog I have posted many articles documenting this climate and environmental crisis from scientific sources that are the most credible. Because I don't want to be accused of "cherry picking" my sources related to global warming, I recently posted a "recommended" article entitled "Cutting air pollution would not cause ‘near-term spike’ in global warming" that summarized the implications of a research that was published in Nature (behind a paywall) that contradicted a major contention of biologist Guy McPherson, a pessimist about global warming. McPherson has argued, based on his study of climate change, that cutting emissions of carbon dioxide now would only contribute to global warming (known as McPherson's paradox). I sent the article from CarbonBrief to friends who have contact with McPherson to see what they thought of it. They in turn sent it to McPherson who trashed the study and asserted that there were "abundance of evidence" supporting his contention.

I think McPherson is likely right because of several reasons: 1) research trends clearly show that more recent studies from reputable sources are more pessimistic than earlier ones; 2) capitalist authoritative sources have always and consistently opposed the whole impact of global warming studies simply because their system is incompatible with the implications of global warming (also see this, and even in Russia a major climate scientist finds difficulties); and 3) the scientific community has been reticent and conflicted about the dangers of global warming and environmental degradation.

I recommend to those concerned about this issue (and we all should be) to subscribe to a YouTube channel Just Have a Think. [No! See my revised opinion.] The videos are narrated by Dave Borlace, a Brit. Listen to his clear explanation of arctic sea ice, methane release, and the efforts of Natalia Shakhova, a Russian climate scientist.

(A best post)