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 LappĆ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, January 15, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, January 15, 2022

  • States Hoarding Billion Of Welfare $$$ featuring Naomi Karavani, a comedian, who uses sarcastic comedy to expose, under covid's government policies, how the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer--from Redacted Tonight's channel on YouTube (07:06).
  • Hang On…. Have We All Been CONNED By Jan 6th?! featuring Russell Brand, a British comedian, turned serious political analyst, astutely commenting, on what sounds like the Deep State, regarding the latter's distorted and hostile emphasis on the Jan. 6 protests at Congress--from Brand's channel on YouTube (18:05).
They’ve been working tirelessly to ensure that the internet serves as a net positive for themselves and a net negative for the rest of us, manipulating the large-scale movements of information so that dissident voices are increasingly marginalized and inconsequential while giving themselves the ability to funnel propaganda into public minds far more rapidly and efficiently than ever before. If they succeed in their objectives, ordinary people will wind up no better at sharing unauthorized ideas and information than they were before the internet, while our rulers will be far more effective in controlling the way we think at mass scale.
  • Andrew Cuomo Investigations DROPPED! featuring Jimmy Dore and whoever is posing as Cuomo as a sarcastic commentary on the dropped charges by various prosecutors--using his channel on YouTube (06:37).  
  • Pentagon Just Admitted They're Unaccountable featuring Lee Camp, a comedian, using his humorous asides to maintain his comedy, but meanwhile lambasting media corporations for cooperating with the Pentagon (under the Department of "Defense") to downplay its unaccountability--from his Redacted Tonight's channel on YouTube (07:37).
The world is entering what looks like a new, even more complex cold war, in which any misunderstanding, mishap or false move could rapidly escalate into nuclear confrontation
 
My reaction: I've recently been in communication with a friend who is traveling the world, and he has observed that a secret US base in some nation is acting as a relay base to send a huge contingent of American troops to other areas. This worries me.
  • Kazakhstan coup fails, US-Russia talks go nowhere. Is war on horizon? featuring Pepe Escobar in a lengthy, but an important interview conducted by Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone using the latter's channel on YouTube (1:50:12). My reaction: I obviously haven't listened to all of this interview, but I will. I consider Escobar as the world's top journalist.
Max Blumenthal and geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar discuss the violent coup attempt in Kazakhstan, and its crucial importance as an ally of Russia and the center of China's Belt and Road Initiative. Pepe addresses US and Turkish meddling, and why this massive and misunderstood country is suddenly at the heart of the new cold war.

They also talk about the failure of the US-Russia talks in Geneva and if war could be on the horizon. 
  • Kazakhstan Chaos: An Opportunity, But for Who? by Brian Berletic, an independent blogger, ex-Marine, who lives in Thailand with his family--from New Eastern Outlook. My reaction: Berletic points to US organizations whose policies are propaganda and subversion.
Sean Twomey, an Irish physicist, flew into clouds to measure their reflectivity, and found that the smaller and more numerous the water droplets, the higher the albedo. Watching the white spray from crashing waves, John Latham realized that Twomey's idea could work to keep the Arctic cool. If tiny droplets of seawater could be seeded into clouds, they would reflect more sunlight, and prevent ice from melting in the summer. He asked #StephenSalter to design a system to make it work. He did. Peter Wadhams agrees that this method would apply a sticking plaster to global warming and buy time to restore the climate. The same process could help preserve coral reefs.
 
Now the question is, can someone be found to finance the operation soon enough to prevent the melting of the Arctic and subsequent release of methane? As #PaulBeckwith points out, it's not rocket science. Instead of sending rockets into space, if Messrs. Musk, Bezos, or Branson would focus on saving the planet, they could provide the ships needed for marine cloud brightening. #PeterWadhams notes that the cost is low for such a powerful intervention and well worth it. It could save the sea ice, the coral reefs, and help cool the ocean. If nations won't do it, maybe a scientifically minded billionaire can rise to the challenge. 
 
My reaction: The capitalist ruling classes that are in control of the US/British/Zionist Empire are certainly not going to fund this effort because it is not profitable or won't extend their power. Depending on billionaires to save us is foolish. Meanwhile, the leading nations who have declared independence from the Empire have all they can handle to survive the ongoing efforts of the Empire to destroy them.
at

Friday, January 14, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, January 14, 2022

  • My Head Talking About Zircon And Other Things. By Andrei Martyanov from his weblog  Reminiscence of the Future... in a video presentation via his channel on YouTube (25:18). My reaction: This is a classic post by Martyanov, an American military expert and emigrant from Russia. I think his views are reasons for Escobar's recommendation that the USA and NATO, the US/British/Zionist Empire's military, should not provoke Russia.
  • Tibet, the CIA & the Dalai Lama… by Mickey Z., a reliable political analyst, from his weblog on Substack. My reaction: I'm omitting a part of the post's title because I don't see what the article has to do with Thelonius Monk, but it has everything to do with the ever-deceptive CIA and its operations in Tibet.
  • Paolo Sorbello: Kazakhstan Protests Sparked by Inequality, Inflation, & Lack of Representation posted by the interviewer from Geopolitics & Empire's channel on YouTube (36:01). My reaction: The (unnamed) interviewer (now living in Mexico but has lived in a number of countries including Kazakhstan) who wants to get the real story on the Kazakhstan protests, interviews an acquaintance (I think) who lives in Kazakhstan, but is vacationing in Italy, about his opinions on what he thinks about the uprising. Sorbello was born and raised in Sicily.
The editors distinguish four periods in the methods of management of sovereign debt by States and private creditors. We largely agree with their division into four periods, of which I offer here a short summary. 
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Thursday, January 13, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, January 13, 2022 (Abbreviated aggregated post because of an eye appointment.)

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association and a social theorist. He has published more than 100 articles in leading scientific journals, on physics and environmental science. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism.
  • Fascism in the USA (part 2 of 2) featuring a video (1:09:24) of three participants in a discussion of Jan. 6 demonstration at Congress from Breakthrough News. (Note: I didn't have time to listen to most of the discussion.)
Brian Becker, Claudia De La Cruz and Gabriel Rockhill continue The Socialist Program’s coverage of the anniversary of the January 6 assault that dispersed Congress. One year after the attack attempted to overturn the election, the architects of that plan have yet to face prosecution and a movement of the far-right consolidates.
 
Brian is joined by Claudia De La Cruz, co-Executive Director of The People’s Forum, popular educator, community organizer and theologian, and Dr. Gabriel Rockhill, Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop and Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University.
  • Monday~Choices by John Allen from his new weblog on Substack. My reaction: I welcome Allen back! He would like you to subscribe to his new weblog to replace others from his former weblog on Medium where he was suspended because of their censorship rules.
  • Science Update: Did We Just Blow It? featuring the views and analysis of Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via his YouTube channel--18:19), who has fearlessly focused his attention throughout much of his career on the climate crisis.
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Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, January 12, 2022

As of now, the province is looking to make this financial penalty “significant” claiming that something like $50 or $100 is not significant enough. However there is no estimation of what the cost will be as of yet.
 
[Premier] Legault also stated that “the vaccine is the key to fight the virus,” a common talking point used by politicians and health authorities that is not backed up by science. Mounting evidence continues to indicate that the vaccine does not prevent COVID-19 transmission and is not necessary for younger individuals as their rates of severe disease are extremely small. This means by blanket mandating vaccines and boosters, many people’s lives are unnecessarily being put at risk.
But before we begin talking about that, Professor Hudson, another reason I wanted to have you today is to talk about a big story that went viral. It was just published, and it’s on the website Wall Street on Parade. It went so viral that the website actually went down, because it was being shared so much.

This is an article just published at Wall Street on Parade. I have it up in the archive because the website is down. And the article is titled, There’s a News Blackout on the Fed’s Naming of the Banks that Got Its Emergency Repo Loans; Some Journalists Appear to Be Under Gag Orders. And this is by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, published on January 3.
 
(Note: I posted this article from Wall Street on Parade on Jan. 4, 2022--second from the bottom.)
 
My reaction: The moral of this (short) story is "go to the source of this issue" (the critiques of Wall Street contained in Wall Street on Parade's weblog rather than read this lengthy transcript. The only reason for this interview is because of Hudson's publication of Super Imperialism (back in 1972) after which he attracted many leftist critics. Since then, Hudson has played it safe (def.) mostly to preserve his career at the University of Missouri.
The populist left has slowly understood that the institutions and networks of power that rule over us are systematically corrupt, and that they will continue on the current ecocidal path to maintain their power. This left is internally divided – and largely ineffective – because it cannot agree on whether the remedy is to be more assertive in seeking reform or to work towards overthrowing the corrupt system. 
 
But soon he gives another related insight to the title of this post:
 
Those who try to open up a little space – in politics, academia, and journalism – to think critically about our society and how power is misused are the chief targets. Western establishments have grown increasingly concerned about the expansion of popular freedoms that arrived with social media a decade or so ago, which have allowed us to analyze and critique elite interests and strategies. This has posed a very obvious threat to the establishment’s continuing ability to propagandize us and has led to far more unpredictable and unstable social and political landscapes.

Our increased ability to bypass corporate, billionaire-owned media has led to inevitable polarization. We have seen the emergence of three antagonistic tribes, based largely on the way each consumes media. 
High-level international banking officials and organizations last month gathered in Israel for a global “war game” exercise simulating the collapse of the global financial system.

The tabletop exercise was reminiscent of “Event 201” — the pandemic simulation exercise that took place in October 2019, shortly before COVID-19 entered the global scene.
The breakdown of the messy Kazakh op necessarily starts with the usual suspects: the US Deep State, which all but “sang” its strategy in a 2019 RAND corporation report, Extending Russia. Chapter 4, on “geopolitical measures”, details everything from “providing lethal aid to Ukraine”, “promoting regime change in Belarus”, and “increasing support for Syrian rebels” – all major fails – to “reducing Russian influence in Central Asia.”

That was the master concept. Implementation fell to the MI6-Turk connection.
 
Escobar's final sentence is: "Beware the rage of a humiliated Empire."
  • The Straight Gas on Kazakhstan’s Recent Upheaval by Phil Butler from New Eastern Outlook. My reaction: Butler provides initial evidence that subversive agents were behind the chaos in Kazackhstan. I've found throughout foreign events since WWII that when major US "news" outlets initially interpret foreign events in one way before the "dust has settled", it is a sure sign of US involvement behind the events.
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Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, January 11, 2022

  • The Dark Secret History of Capitalism featuring Lee Camp, a comedian, that concentrates the history of capitalism in 9 minutes and 48 minutes while occasionally injecting humor from RT America's channel on YouTube. My reaction: Camp gets away with his expose because YouTube has already impugned RT as sponsored by Russia, the ruling class's enemy number one, while impugning Jimmy Dore as a comedian. Both examples illustrate how YouTube "cancels" any of their influence on you, but both are astute individuals who see what is false about the indoctrination that you receive in educational institutions, Hollywood films, etc. and propaganda shows of the daily "news reporting" by media corporations.
NATO officials have thumbed their noses at Putin’s concern with Russia’s security. Trump’s National Security Advisor and neocon warmonger John Bolton encourages more provocation of Russia, which as Putin has made clear will result in war.

Clearly as 2021 comes to an end, there is no intelligence to be found anywhere in the Western World as all vie to show how tough they are with Russia.

When Putin says Russia has nowhere left to which to retreat, he is telling the idiot West that Russia has reached the extent of its ability to avoid war. “We simply have no room to retreat” means Russia has done all she can do to avoid war and now the Americans must get off Russia’s doorstep.
 
Putin is relying on Biden to show awareness and responsibility and to work for peace by acknowledging Russia’s legitimate security concern. But what if Biden is just a figurehead, and the shots are called by the military/security complex who will go for profits despite the risk that Putin will not back down?
 
What if Washington’s concern is limited to destabilizing Russia in the interest of US hegemony and Russia’s security is precisely what Washington intends to undermine, not secure.
 
My reaction: Roberts knows the Deep State well (see this, this, and this).
The US and organizations including NATO will hold a series of emergency meetings with Russia this week, beginning with Monday's US-Russia meeting in Geneva. Then it moves on to the Russian-NATO Council in Brussels on Wednesday and ends on Thursday's meeting in Vienna at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
 
My reaction: If the Global Times reflects the thinking of the Chinese Communist Party, as some major writers have argued, the Chinese government, in the world's most populous nation, sympathizes with Russia. This is the second most popular article from this source--behind a news item that an earthquake destroyed a section of the Great Wall. For they (China) have experienced similar threats, and they, too, have been painted as an "enemy" by the aggressive growing encroachment of the US/British/Zionist Empire. 
 
The Chinese Communist Party recognizes that the right-wing aggressive capitalist cabal, which took control of the USA after WWII using mostly the highly secretive CIA, has matured into a Nazi-like hegemon, which is in its last desperate stages, with their long sought after goal of ruling the world. As such, the Empire has recently unleashed multiple fronts in this undeclared war: a pandemic led by their corruption of the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) in the hope of damaging the Chinese economy (and some other purposes), the ever-expanding NATO bases adjacent to Russia, a barrage of economic sanctions against anyone who refuses to submit to their Empire diktats, and a variety of subversive acts designed to topple governments of the latter and replace them with more compliant governments as they did in Ukraine. We are, indeed, living in dangerous times! 
  • A Little Bit Of My Talking Head. By Andrei Martyanov, a emigrant from Russia, who is a reputed expert on weapons systems and recommended by Pepe Escobar, from his weblog Reminiscence of the Future.... (Note: I used the "CC" button of this post to access a machine translation of what he said via his channel on YouTube--I understood most of it. The video lasts until about 17:50 followed by a pitch for more support.)
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S.-led Western powers became deluded with arrogant entitlement. As Krainer points out, the Western empire-builders presumed to have the right to wage wars and flout international law. For much of the past three-decade period, Russia was too weak economically and politically to challenge this reckless aggression. But now it has grown strong enough to “check-mate the empire’s global ambitions”. This is why war or regime change in Russia has become an obsessive goal for the U.S. and Western partners. It accounts for the relentless sanctions, Russophobia and surge in tensions over Ukraine and more recently Kazakhstan.

Russia is perceived as an obstacle to Western control over the strategically vital Eurasian continent. The prize of Eurasia has long been coveted by Western imperialists, from the British Empire’s Sir Halford Mackinder to the U.S. strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski.
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Monday, January 10, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, January 10, 2022

  • Fake Science, Invalid Data: There is No Such Thing as a “Confirmed Covid-19 Case”. There is No Pandemic by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky from Global Research. My reaction: I had an experience in my sophomore year at West coast university that is relevant to this article. My class was asked to design and carry out a research project in a psychology class. I came up with a research project that was designed to study data that would indicate whether creative students were more likely score higher on IQ tests. I designed the data derived from the research project to support positive outcomes. Lo and behold, the data supported a positive correlation! The Research Assistant assigned to the class was so impressed that he very enthusiastically complimented me on the conclusions of the project. I thought that he was being extremely naive.
On January 23, 2022, over 10,000 healthcare providers will, for the first time, speak freely about the COVID vaccines. SIMULTANEOUSLY.
  • American Pravda: Our Public Health Problems by Ron Unz from his weblog. (Note: This post has an audio recording of Unz remarks followed by a script.) My reaction: This post will be dismissed by most of the general public simply because he has racist views. But they will do so at the expense of truth which should be their only concern. Instead, we will follow their "truths" proclaimed by their media and educational institutions. The ruling capitalist class has so conditioned Americans, by many decades in power--power we have handed over to them--to control all of "our" social and economic institutions, that the general public will not take this post seriously. Yes, racism is bad, but the general American public has been so manipulated by the ruling class that the ruling class control has caused so much damage to our psyches, and one being racism. But, who among us is without damage? or without fault? Racism has also been one of the damages that they, our capitalist masters, have created to divide us. Haven't you heard the truthful saying that "the best way to control people is to divide them"? We even went to a devastating war (Civil War) over racism. Our masters have accomplished this by separating us into warring camps so that we always fight each other and not them. Meanwhile, most of us will ignore the truth that Unz reveals.
  • Five Companies Control The World. “Conspiracy Theory” or FACT? featuring Russell Brand interviewing Jacques Peretti using Brand's channel on YouTube (11:11). My reaction: I don't know what Peretti's qualifications are, but it is obvious what he describes the truth about our economy. Now that the transnational ruling capitalist class owns everything, they are cashing in on their overwhelming power. They have won the game of "Monopoly" (capitalism)--game over (for us)!
Although this was not a direct threat of Iran’s intent to launch similar strikes against US forces, as it did shortly after the drone strike assassination took place in 2020, most certainly it has made one thing abundantly clear, tensions will escalate. The US Biden administration has been responding with airstrikes against the PMU and Syrian militias, in North Eastern Syria since the third of January, after strikes on their forces. In Iraq, a number of rocket attacks have also targeted the US Embassy in Baghdad, as well as military facilities where American forces are based surrounding the Baghdad airport.

These attacks, in Syria and Iraq, have been brought on by a failed US policy in the region and will likely escalate given the hardline tactics of the Biden administration.
at

Saturday, January 8, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, January 8, 2022

  • SCOTUS weighing Covid jab mandate; death toll in question features a news report for the first 1/3 on the post, which assumes the accuracy of data reported by corporate media, followed by Ben Swann's assessment of the mandates for the remainder of the post--from RT America's channel on YouTube (08:34). My reaction: My living situation in a co-op in which the mortgage is being backed by HUD which follows OSHA mandates, is being affected by those mandates. The popular maintenance man and office manager have refused the experimental vaccines with the result that they have been forced to resign. These are key employees.
  • Are the events of 9/11, the covid pandemic, the event on 1/6/2021 like the Reichstag fire that led to the dictatorship of the Nazi Party? by Ron Horn for my weblog Surviving Capitalism (Not). The short answer is "yes". My brief commentary provides a further explanation:
These contrived events are used to influence Americans to passively follow the diktats of government despite the human rights guaranteed under the Constitution that was forced onto the ruling class, or the reverent "Founding Fathers", by the people to adopt the Bill of Rights in order for the latter to accept the new Constitution. The latter, in its original form, was solely concerned with the protection of the rights of property.
 
Recall the Reichstag fire which preceded that takeover of Germany by the Nazi Party in 1933. This incident is a brief report from ThoughtCo under the subheading "The Dictatorship Begins". Please review this link.

We have already reduced our privacy and legal rights after the 9/11 event following the passage of the Patriot Bill and its extensions. The covid-pandemic mandates have also reduced our right to choose medical interventions, travel and to conduct normal business, and the event on 1/6/2021 is on its way to further restrict our legal rights. The ruling capitalist class is chipping away at our Bill of Rights that is a part of the Constitution until it is completely irrelevant. Thus, we will have fascist rule by the billionaire capitalists essentially the same as that which occurred in Nazi Germany in 1933.
As Kamala Harris compares 1/6 to 9/11 and Nancy Pelosi introduces the cast of Hamilton to sing about democracy, today's inanity should not obscure its dangers.
 
Later, he writes:

Keeping Americans hooked on fear — of Putin's takeover of the U.S., of COVID, of an imminent fascist coup — is their only hope for relevance, profit, and purpose. They can shower themselves with as many Pulitzers as they want for fake Russiagate stories and spend all day applauding one another on social media, but they know they are widely despised and distrusted. Posturing as the bulwark against Fascism and Defenders of Democracy — which in turn depends on the existence of an insurrectionary movement — is their only hope for finding meaning. But cowards and propagandists who weep and engage in public therapy when confronting the slightest discomfort do not make for convincing super heroes.
The fear matrix is depending on you to activate and obey their time travel machines — televisions, smartphones, social media, and all that. They are censoring and programming and conditioning as never before. They’re counting on you to surrender the moment to them. But none of their devious tactics matter if you stay consistently present. Their deception and their desperation only become more obvious and palpable.  You see, the good thing about our minds being so susceptible to suggestion is that we can control what “suggestions” we allow to enter and influence.  
 
And, above all, don't listen to media corporations and their propaganda while trying to access the news. The advice for all other corporate sources regarding entertainment (films and TV), history, and social media which reports corporate-sourced news.
  • A review of DISINTEGRATION Indicators of the Coming American Collapse by Andrei Martyanov" by Ron Horn for my weblog Surviving Capitalism (Not). 
Because of my reading limitations, I didn't read the entire book. After reading the introduction, a bit of chapter 1, and the last two chapters of this book, I've been left wondering why Pepe Escobar recommends following Martyanov. The latter complains about everything, and is clearly disenamored of life in the USA. Although he has made frequent trips back to Russia, I think that he thinks he made mistake in emigrating from his homeland. Still, he may have the necessary qualifications to follow his advice and stop the aggressive policies that are threatening both Russia and China.
 
I found the best relevant biography of Martyanov from his publisher, Clarity Press:
 
ANDREI MARTYANOV is an expert on Russian military and naval issues. He was born in Baku, USSR in 1963. He graduated from the Kirov Naval Red Banner Academy and served as an officer on the ships and staff position of Soviet Coast Guard through 1990. He took part in the events in the Caucasus which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In mid-1990s he moved to the United States where he currently works as Laboratory Director in a commercial aerospace group. He is a frequent blogger on the US Naval Institute Blog. He is author of Losing Military Supremacy, The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, and Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse. 
 
After having read his views expressed in Martyanov's latest book, I think that Escobar's recommendation was based on his fear that our Pentagon generals and political officials will create a horrible mistake in militarily challenging Russia (and China) as many recent events confirm. According to Martyanov, these war-hawks are severely deluded into thinking that the US/British/Zionist Empire could prevail by any military attack on Russia. Martyanov, who is described by Clarity Press above, knows more than a little about military superiority of the war-making abilities of the two countries. He sees Russia's military as far superior to the US's, and he thinks that many of the US leaders are not sufficiently aware of this.

Martyanov's argument goes like this. The US's military-industrial complex, which sells weapons to all NATO nations and its allies, is thoroughly corrupt by many years of focusing on the bottom line (profit) that they no longer produce weapons that are comparable to Russia's. The war-hawks are thoroughly deluded into thinking that the US still enjoys an advantage over Russia's killing technology. The war-hawks seem to be in control of the aggressive war policies that threaten Russia by installing NATO military bases on its border and threats related to Ukraine, and likewise threaten China over Taiwan's independence. Thus, Escobar wants the US population to follow Martyanov's advice to prevent an unimaginable nuclear war catastrophe, which according to President Putin of Russia, nobody would survive.
Nearly three dozen scientists are about to embark on a never-before done expedition to the Thwaites Glacier along the Antarctic peninsula. Referred to as the ‘doomsday glacier’ because of its sheer size—Thwaites is melting and cracking at record place. This $50 million joint study by teams from the US and UK are seeking to learn more about this ice behemoth- which they say, is responsible for a 4 percent sea-level rise already. Conservation biologist and author of Generation Z Emergency Reese Halter joins In Question to discuss.
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Friday, January 7, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, January 7, 2022

Is there anything you can or should do if you are facing a vaccine mandate as a condition of attending school or keeping a job? Yes. Absolutely, there is.
  • The CIA’s War on Democracy: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Edward J. Curtin, Jr. Converse by Edward Curtin features a video of this interview (34:44) from his weblog Behind the Curtain. My reaction: Both Kennedy and Curtin are supporters of the capitalist system, a system which pretends to offer a democracy for the public instead of the control and dominance of capitalist class rule. But I think both (along with Glenn Greenwald--and JFK) are honest regarding their political views.
That the January 6 riot was some sort of serious attempted insurrection or "coup” was laughable from the start, and has become even more preposterous with the passage of time and the emergence of more facts. The United States is the most armed, militarized and powerful regime in the history of humanity. The idea that a thousand or so Trump supporters, largely composed of Gen X and Boomers, who had been locked in their homes during a pandemic — three of whom were so physically infirm that they dropped dead from the stress — posed anything approaching a serious threat to “overthrow” the federal government of the United States of America is such a self-evidently ludicrous assertion that any healthy political culture would instantly expel someone suggesting it with a straight face.
  • A year later, what are the lessons from the Trump-backed insurrection of January 6? from Peoples Dispatch. (Note: In this post Monica Cruz interviews Brian Becker, a prominent left-wing activist, who attempts to assess what happened on Jan. 6 of last year.) My reaction: Although he doesn't offer new evidence, he reviews the known events surrounding the alleged "attack on the Capitol" on January 6, 2021 that were characterized by feeble attempts of the FBI and the Capitol guards to prepare for this demonstration, and he concludes that this was a public relations stunt engineered by the Democratic Party to prepare for the next elections.)
So I think that the Democratic Party is grandstanding by looking like they’re big and strong against Trump when, in fact, what they’re doing is the opposite. He is not facing criminal charges. As for the other charges, the contempt charges in Congress will be in fact the political rallying cry for Steve Bannon and the other parts of the Trump entourage. So again, it’s performance theater by the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, it is using these events so that people can send millions and millions to the Democrats as they prepare for the next round of elections. And you also have Trump using the allegation of election fraud to raise lots of money – hundreds of millions of dollars.

So it doesn’t appear to be serious because it’s not serious.
 
Becker then goes on to argue that fascists events characterized what was going on in all Western nations in the 1930s when their populations were suffering from the Great Depression which corresponds to my analysis based on readings of reliable historians and examination of writings during that time.
 
The promotion of the scandalous nature of the event by the Democratic Party represents punishment for that part of the populace who voted for Trump, another capitalist politician, in 2016 in opposition to the ruling class's chosen candidate Hillary Clinton. The ruling capitalist class has chosen the Democratic Party as a vehicle for the execution of their agenda to confuse workers and civil libertarians in their belief that the Party represents them instead of the ruling capitalist class.
  • The Truth About China in Africa features Danny Haiphong and his views about China in an interview conducted by Naomi Karavani using Redacted Tonight's channel on YouTube.
Naomi Karavani interviews journalist Danny Haiphong for a look at modern China, the propaganda being deployed against it by the US empire, and the reality contrasting that propaganda. Haiphong’s journalism is published on his “Chronicles of Haiphong” Substack. There are many lies being spread about China across the West and they’re shading the world’s understanding of what’s happening in the world’s most populous country. Haiphong explains how the Belt and Road Initiative really works, the new Cold War being developed by the NATO powers, and much more.  
  • What Kazakhstan Isn’t by Craig Murray, an independent blogger from Scotland, from his weblog. (Note: I am posting this article in an effort to present another view from an independent blogger of recent events in Kazakhstan.) My reaction: I'm still not convinced that subversive agents of the CIA are not involved. But, we will soon see.
The narrative on the right is that Putin is looking to annex Kazakhstan, or at least the majority ethnic Russian areas in the north. This is utter nonsense.

The narrative on the left is that the CIA is attempting to instigate another colour revolution and put a puppet regime into Nur-Sultan (as the capital is called this week). This also is utter nonsense.
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Thursday, January 6, 2022

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, January 6, 2022

  • Which Was Washed More? by Allen Forrest from Dissident Voice. (Note: He offers a cartoon to express what he thinks.)
The overriding factor is the financial incentives of offering money, as is true for hospitals in the USA, as a reward for attributing the cause of death to Covid-19. 
 
I recall my experience in Wisconsin as a Rehabilitation Counselor. I had transferred from California where I did the same work. But the Wisconsin bureaucratic officers were greatly motivated by the "rehabilitation closures" (meaning that clients benefited from our services to achieve employment) they could report in order to justify their next year's appeal for extra funds. Whereas in California the bureaucratic overseers, under the Reagan governorship, had slashed funds for rehabilitation, the Wisconsin counterparts were motivated by more money related to "rehabilitation closures". 
 
Thus, the typical closure had "unpaid family worker" (or some such fake closure) that theoretically described a person who as a result of our services had resulted in another family member obtaining employment. Anyone who walked through our doors in Wisconsin ended up as a "rehabilitation closure"--and the pressures on us counselors were enormous to obtain such closures. (I finally left this career for which I had long prepared.)
 
This policy was justified with an explanation that they were used to acquire more funds to do our work. I became aware that 1/2 of my time was devoted to fake "closures" as real work to help a person with some kind of disability. The raising of funds was the primary reward for our work in Wisconsin, which resulted in Wisconsin having high rates of "closures". And, the same is true for diagnosing someone with covid. The inadequate PCR test also contributes to the excessive rates of covid in USA.
 
The ruling class has taken advantage of the complicated nature of attributing any one cause for death in order to have high rates of Covid-19. They knew that the US population has, in general, poor health by consuming "fast foods", inadequate exercise, poor public health arrangements, and American lifestyles. Medical practitioners and specialists who criticize these policies and methods are threatened with loss of licenses to practice, terminated, or threatened with shortened career opportunities. Those who comply are rewarded with career advancement, and most do.
 
Since then, I've discovered that most state services of rehabilitation have been privatized and taken control of by insurance companies.
British scholar Susan Williams has spent years documenting these and other instances of the United States’ secret operations during the early years of African independence. The resulting book, White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, may be the most thorough investigation to date of CIA involvement in Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Over more than 500 pages, Williams counters the lies, deceptions, and pleas of innocence perpetuated by the CIA and other US agencies to reveal a government that never let its failure to grasp the motivations of Africa’s leaders stop it from intervening, often violently, to undermine or overthrow them.
  • Steppe on Fire: Kazakhstan’s Color Revolution by Pepe Escobar from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: I regard Escobar as the world's top journalist. After he describes what he knows about Kazakhstan from his visit there in 2019 and from his contacts there, he continues:
Now compare it to what I learned from two different, high-ranking intel sources.

The first source was explicit: the whole Kazakh adventure is being sponsored by MI6 to create a new Maidan right before the Russia/US-NATO talks in Geneva and Brussels next week, to prevent any kind of agreement. Significantly, the “rebels” maintained their national coordination even after the internet was disconnected.

The second source is more nuanced: the usual suspects are trying to force Russia to back down against the collective West by creating a major distraction in their Eastern front, as part of a rolling strategy of chaos all along Russia’s borders. That may be a clever diversionary tactic, but Russian military intel is watching. Closely. And for the sake of the usual suspects, this better may not be interpreted – ominously – was a war provocation.
  • Science Update: New England Heating Up! featuring the views and analysis of Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson while focusing on climate data for the states in New England (via his YouTube channel--11:17). He is an independent scientist, who has fearlessly focused his attention throughout much of his career on the climate crisis.
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