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

Friday, November 19, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, November 19, 2021

  • Biden’s Bounty on Your Life: Hospitals’ Incentive Payments for COVID-19 by Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D. from Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a re-post of an article from Truth for Health Foundation. (Note: This goes into details of the "incentive payments" to hospitals.) My reaction: I haven't seen this reported for many months, but I reported it (in general terms) in the early period of the pandemic, and it made me suspicious that the pandemic was engineered in addition to reports of medical doctors receiving pressure to diagnose patients with Covid-19. I received similar pressure to place clients in "jobs" from the Dept. of Vocational Rehabilitation in Wisconsin when I worked there as a Rehabilitation Counselor in 1969-1974. Most Rehabilitation Counselors complied with this pressure, but I finally quit the career which I for many years had prepared for. I've realized since then that this career, along with other "Guns and Butter" programs, was established by Pres. Lyndon Johnson to co-opt college students to support the Vietnam War.
  • Fauci's Greatest Covid Failures Exposed featuring Jimmy Dore who presents new material from Newsweek and other sources regarding Fauci. My reaction: The ruling class permits Dore to charge Fauci's mismanagement of the Covid pandemic because he is listed as a "comedian" along with other comedians like Russell Brand and CJ Hopkins.
About The Jimmy Dore Show:
#TheJimmyDoreShow is a hilarious and irreverent take on news, politics and culture featuring Jimmy Dore, a professional stand up comedian, author and podcaster. The show is also broadcast on Pacifica Radio Network stations throughout the country.
  • Metaverse Will ‘Trap Us in Virtual Reality’ and Position Zuckerberg as ‘World’s Largest Landlord’ by Jeremy Loffredo from Children's Health Defense. (Note: This post features findings by Emily Jashinsky (of The Hill's website) and a video report (09:53) by her at the end of the article. "The world's largest landlord" is put in quotes to indicate that he intends to be the largest landlord in virtual reality and not the real world.) My reaction: Because capitalists always search for opportunities to earn more money, this capitalist entrepreneur plans to encourage workers to live out their fantasies in virtual reality, but not reality. Thus if he succeeds in this metaverse adventure, fantasies will become a substitute for reality. Billionaires, who own and control nearly all the businesses in the USA, think that ordinary people are so dumbed-down with the endlessly meaningless entertainment media that their corporations provide. My only hope is that they are wrong! I think that this is a risky gamble that is more out of desperation than it is to create more profits.
To those U.S. centric stories one must add all the false claims made about foreign countries - see Syria and Belarus for recent example.  One then finds that the media [corporate] do not report but, as Sullivan writes, "make the news fit the broader political fight". [my insertion]
  • Struggle against Industrial Agriculture featuring Chris Hedges' report on industrial agriculture from his channel on YouTube (26:36). My reaction: Hedges and author Daniel J. O'Connell testify to the effects of capitalist exploitation of the land: widespread poverty among a few rich, censorship, violence against workers, etc.
The web of Jeffrey Epstein associates continues to grow---with Boris Johnson’s sister now saying the Prime Minister of the UK was once very close friends with Epstein’s longtime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Given that Maxwell is set to face trial on sex trafficking charges---it raises a number of questions about what Boris knew and he knew it. Author & director Sean Stone joins In Question to discuss. 
 
My reaction: More people are coming out of the woodwork to report stories of the Empire's (the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire) ruling capitalist classes and their depraved activities. 
The United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin this week performed impressive, albeit pathetic, mental gymnastics. In a press conference, the Pentagon chief called on Russia to be more transparent about troop movements “on the border with Ukraine”. In others words, on Russian soil.

Meanwhile, the absurd hypocrisy sees U.S. and NATO forces brazenly escalating their offensive presence on Russia’s borders, especially in the Black Sea region.
  • Cuba defeats US destabilization attempts from Peoples Dispatch which features a video report (05:17). My reaction: Because I was worried about the recent attempts to overthrow the socialist government of Cuba by US subversive agents, I welcomed this report and especially the report of Medea Benjamin (Code Pink) which was featured near the beginning.
  • So Said, Not So Easily Done by Steve D. Whittaker, PhD, MSc from Internationalist 360°. Note: We have a report from a highly educated person living in the Caribbean about dealing with the expected destabilization of the climate.
If we are to stay connected to any viable, safe and secure future, we must work to break the strength of the connection between climate-change-induced disasters and the detrimental environmental effects by actively inserting ourselves with data-driven, innovative interventions (with the caveat that some nations are more ready than others to do so using technology) for the sake of ourselves and those who are to come.

So said. Not so easily done. But do it we must! Caribbean lives now, and soon-to-come, are at stake. 
at

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, November 18, 2021

Operation Coronavirus has shown how mass hypnosis can be inculcated into entire populations, around the world. We are now 20 months into “2 weeks to flatten the curve” and there are still many people hopelessly lost in the official narrative. The NWO (New World Order) controllers know that narrative is everything. To control the information and to control the way people interpret that information is the absolute power to control perception.
A bill to create the panel was introduced on November 4 by four senators: Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Kirsten Gillibrand and Republicans Roger Marshall and Joni Ernst. The commission would consist of 10 members, five Democrats and five Republicans.

Explaining the themes of the commission, the Post wrote, “One vital area of inquiry is public health systems, which were overwhelmed during the pandemic.
Strategic Culture Foundation’s editorial production is based in Russia and the journal has been publishing articles by international authors for over a decade. The online journal has gained respect and readership primarily in North America for its critical and diverse coverage of geopolitics. It seems that the official move to ban SCF by the U.S. government is really aimed at shutting down independent journalism and critical thinking under the cynical guise of combating a “foreign enemy”. This has baleful echoes with the Red Scare Cold War years in the U.S.

By banning American voices from the journal, Washington is attempting to bolster its smear against SCF as being a sinister intelligence agency. But the real objective is to criminalize critical journalism and indeed any form of critical dissent.
 
I refuse to obey this ban.
  • John McEvoy Exposes Britain’s Role in Suppressing Democracy at Home and Abroad features an interview, in visual and audio versions, conducted by "Lowkey" of Mint Press News with McEvoy, an investigative journalist. (Note: McEvoy, judging by his accent, is obviously Scottish.) My reaction: McEvoy has encyclopedia information, much like Whitney Webb, about the British ruling class efforts to suppress left-wing news and self-serving political actions from entering mainstream media and also about British efforts to participate with the US ruling class to attack Venezuela in any way short of an actual invasion. McEvoy's information illustrates how the British capitalist ruling class coordinates efforts with secretive US "intelligence" agencies to suppress any threats to capitalist rule. 
  • TYT sides w/Rittenhouse! Agrees It Was Self-Defense! featuring Jimmy Dore, using his channel on YouTube (1:03:24). My reaction: Dore uses videos put together that pose a startling different version from corporate media. The latter's coverage is consistent with fake stories presented in their media of other political events in domestic and foreign lands. This clip illustrates how the public is lied to by corporate media that uses the "woke" ideas as a weapon that once again serves to fool the American people. This clip is also an illustration of why you should not listen/view events reported by the self-serving corporate media.
  • JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass | The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey featuring McCaffrey as he reviews the latest assassination film of JFK from RT's channel on YouTube (05:44). My reaction: The promotion of this film is a doomed effort because after the event in 1963, the public was sound asleep and others were filled with fear about the Russian menace due to propaganda that said so. The time to do something about this event was then, not now with so many problems that ordinary people are trying to deal with.
  • Using the Climate Crisis: Whitney Webb Discusses Global Elites’ Takeover of Nature featuring Webb, in an interview (33:28) conducted by Mnar Adley, explaining what was really going on at the recent COP 26--from Mint Press News. (Note: This interview is brought to you in visual and audio versions.) My reaction: This COP 26 is where billionaires and their managers recently gathered in Glasgow, Scotland to privatize ecological services to obtain more wealth and power in the world. It was a meeting of major capitalists and their managers who made plans to benefit themselves and not the population of the world.
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Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, November 17, 2021

  • Sharyl Attkisson: Vaccine Mandates Are the Ultimate Showdown from Mercola. My reaction: I share with Attkisson my impression during my recent brief road trip to NY state from my home in southern Minnesota: most businesses are not enforcing this edict. I was north of NY City on the Hudson River, but I was not turned away at federally controlled offices which had notices that they prohibited unvaccinated people. I remain unvaccinated (against any disease) and I've enjoyed the longest healthy period (outside of my mostly temporary problems with balance) that I can remember, but of course, I (voluntarily) follow good health advice by limiting my exposure to crowds. I am 85 years of age.
  • 💥Matt Smith: Building Parallel Societies to Survive the Great Reset from the channel of Geopolitics & Empire on Odysee. (Note: The narrator, who currently lives in Mexico (whose name I couldn't ascertain), interviews Smith who has fled to Uruguay to survive the restrictions posed by the "pandemic project" that is confronting most people today.) My reaction: Over the course of the pandemic he formed two hypothetical explanations: either evil people are behind it and controlling it or else they are worried about something terrible is going to happen on planet Earth. I, of course, subscribe to the latter hypothesis--and it is the destabilization of the climate, not to save ordinary people, but to save themselves and their system of capitalism. Then he launches into a discussion of how to deal with this horrible situation, and he says it's only going to get worse. Smith advises using choices that you have left and with emphasis on building trust with others in order to survive the horrendous restrictions posed by governmental authorities. He doesn't advice for people without any capital; but with the people with at least some capital. I found this to be a highly intelligent discussion worth the 58 minutes of listening. 
  • Tuesday~Predicaments by John Allen from his weblog on Medium. My reaction: I think he offers good advice, and I follow it. My home is an apartment in co-op housing. I bank at two different credit unions which have co-op type arrangements. I buy food at a co-op store. It is my experience that co-ops are the optimal experience that one can have while living in a capitalist society.
The project’s completion might take some by surprise, particularly if they follow Western media and believe Vietnam is an adversary of China or that the Southeast Asian state, once the target of a vicious two decades-long war waged against it by the United States, is now joined together with Washington in their common purpose of “standing up” to China.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The notion that China is a regional “bully” evaporates with the slightest breeze of truth, and all that’s left is the fact that Vietnam and China – despite their many differences – are building a constructive future together.
at
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Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, November 16, 2021

As an NHS hospital doctor, I have had a front-row seat as the drama of the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded. It has been a year and a half of confusion, frustration and anger for me as I’ve watched our profession drawn into complicity with what I anticipate will be regarded as one of the most egregious public health disasters in history.

I have watched as ‘the science’ has been presented on the national stage flanked by Union Jack flags as an unassailable truth.
While the bill is being touted as $1 trillion devoted to rebuilding roads, bridges, airports and seaports, as well as expanding rural broadband and providing other necessary repairs to crumbling physical infrastructure, only $550 billion is new money. The rest was already appropriated last year under the Trump administration and is being redirected.

In terms of the actual infrastructure needs of a modern, 21st century society, the bill provides only a drop in the bucket. The $1 trillion is spread out over ten years, for an average of only $100 billion a year, far less than the typical infrastructure legislation for roads and bridges alone in previous decades.
Darkness descends over civilization and freedom. It flows not from any external threat but from within the human heart. We are beings capable of happiness and flourishing, but sometimes we push our fears and anxieties into the shadows. There they fester. And from those deep psychological bowers, fear and anxiety reemerge transformed.
 
To live right now, then, is to live in paradox. Despite conditions of relative peace and abundance, a psychosocial pathology has taken hold. It manifests itself as something like a replacement religion. Where people once turned to their temples and communities for reassurance, more turn now to political authority.
One has to wonder who exactly selected someone as toxic as Victoria Nuland to go to Russia, but worse was to come after her return to America. Any Putin-Biden summit meeting is now less likely than it was several weeks ago as right after Nuland’s departure for the United States, the bilateral relationship worsened. The NATO headquarters in Brussels declared several Russian diplomats ‘personae non gratae’, and the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to the provocation by sending home all NATO representatives present at diplomatic missions in Russia. In response back in the United States, the media and some Congressmen and Biden Administration officials immediately began to press forward with their plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, a vital or even existential issue for Russia that guarantees to scuttle any attempts to actually improve relations. And the White House continues to make a bad situation worse by suggesting that it has an obligation to “defend Ukraine.”

So why was CIA Director William Burns in Moscow and what did he accomplish? God only knows! 
  • Hate speech and misinformation in Ethiopia’s war from Al Jazeera (to 11:25). My reaction: In their efforts to balance the reporting, Al Jazeera tries to express both sides. However, notice that the reported fake news is funded by US-based corporations like CNN, Facebook, and Twitter. Even the Ethiopian journalist Nima Elbagir is employed by CNN. (Let me remind you that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the UN's WHO, is from the northern Tigray province of Ethiopia. Coincidence? I think not. Here is one commentary on the WHO chief.)                                  
                                                                     Map of Ethiopia
https://www.worldatlas.com/r/w960-q80/upload/60/6f/d7/regional-states-of-ethiopia-map.png
If you to understand this article, you must know about the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine, an important doctrine of the Pentagon and a major driving force shaping US foreign policies. Fortunately, Meyssan has explained that topic also. In May of this year, he posted an article (The Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine) exploring this topic in which he wrote the following:
 
The final word on the project was in the "Office of Force Transformation," created by Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon in the days following the 9/11 attacks. It was occupied by Admiral Arthur Cebrowski. This famous strategist had been the designer of the computerization of the armed forces [5]. One could believe that this Office was a way to finish his work. But no one disputed this reorganization anymore. No, he was there to transform the mission of the U.S. armed forces, as the few recordings of his lectures in military academies attest.

Arthur Cebrowski spent three years lecturing to all senior U.S. officers, thus to all current general officers. The target determined by Admiral Cebrowski is not only the "wider Middle East", but all regions not integrated into the globalized economy.

What he was teaching was quite simple. The world economy was becoming globalized. To remain the world’s leading power, the United States had to adapt to financial capitalism. The best way to do this was to ensure that developed countries could exploit the natural resources of poor countries without political obstacles.
 
Ordinary Americans must understand the objective of the original cabal in 1940 which I have elaborated on in this article. But if you don't trust my judgment, you surely must trust Prof. Stephen Wertheim, a historian at Columbia University, who recently wrote a book entitled Tomorrow, the World that provided details of a 1940 conspiracy. They were right-wing ruling class figures, ensconced in the Council on Foreign Relations and the State Department, and swearing to secrecy their launch of a project destined to make the USA the dominate force in the world. Because today they are so confident about their powers of control, they have now released a book openly announcing and celebrating this achievement.
 
I argue that ordinary thinking Americans must understand this decades-long project of the ruling capitalist class in order to understand many of the issues of today, including especially the Covid pandemic, the decimation of workers and a large sector of the middle class, and their mad continuation of aggressive policies which may lead to a nuclear war conflagration. 
 
With this book, the capitalist class has declared victory over their sleepy and sleeping subjects--ordinary Americans. They have so manipulated and distracted public opinion with their ownership/control of major media and entertainment corporations that they have neutralized ordinary Americans while they pursued the goal of global supremacy. Only the ecological forces of this planet can oppose and defeat them, and they will soon with the destabilization of the Earth's climate.
Amid the deepening climate crisis, it has become increasingly clear that capitalism is not only the root of the problem, but it also offers no viable solutions. Police cracked down on those that bore the clarion call “socialism or extinction”.
The United Nations COP26 Glasgow Climate Pact signed on November 14 is another confirmation of what we learned in Durban in 2011, at the 17th UN climate summit. As expressed by Indigenous activist Ta’Kaiya Blaney (from the Tla A’min Nation in western Canada): ‘COP26 is a performance. It is an illusion constructed to save the capitalist economy rooted in resource extraction and colonialism.’ 
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Monday, November 15, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, November 15, 2021

  • The Real Anthony Fauci. RFK Jr. Discusses His Book in this 1:20:13 interview with Robert Kennedy, Jr. from Mercola's weblog. (Note: This post includes a transcript of the interview. I had to read the interview because my hearing deficit made it difficult to hear Kennedy's speech.)
  • Pfizer Anti-Viral & Ivermectin Science Based Comparison featuring Jimmy Dore from his channel on YouTube (30:49) using a video by John Campbell, PhD, to explain why Ivermectin is medically useful, but not profitable to Big Pharma. Pfizer has come up to a new drug that it is very similar to Ivermectin but is profitable.
The truth is that the CIA runs United States’ foreign policy covertly, along with the Pentagon and the weapons/oil/minerals industries, which are somewhat more visible.
  • Censorship is the Last Gasp of the Liberal Class by Danny Haiphong from Mint Press News. My reaction: Although US corporate media often prefer "liberal" (because it sounds much better than "capitalist"), the word is often used in the sense of civil rights as reflected in the Bill of Rights which were tacked on to the original US Constitution to garner more support. Although nowadays "liberal class" is not a socioeconomic class, I think Haiphong uses the word to describe people who otherwise support capitalism, but pretend to favor civil rights. When capitalist practices conflict with civil rights, such people always support capitalism. I think Haiphong uses the word in this sense. Others often use the word "liberal" in the classic sense to refer to "capitalist ideology". This is for historical reasons: "liberal" was often attached to the early capitalists as meaning free of monarchical control. Earlier capitalists often had to obtain licenses from monarchs to engage in commerce. Socioeconomic class has been banned by the capitalist ruling class from usage in contemporary America. The ambiguity of the word (see Wikipedia's meaning) aids the US ruling capitalist class, which literally owns mainstream media, in their efforts to confuse workers. 
... let us not forget this is a system that deliberately sought to eradicate a culture of self-reliance that prevailed among the working class in the 19th century (self-education, recycling products, a culture of thrift, etc) via advertising and a formal school education that ensured conformity and set in motion a lifetime of wage labour and dependency on the products manufactured by an environmentally destructive capitalism.

A system that has its roots in inflicting massive violence across the globe to exert control over land and resources elsewhere.
The close involvement of corporations in the climate talks at Glasgow is testimony to the fact that these negotiations are not solely beholden to the public. The financial stakes are high and so is the involvement of private interests. The widespread acceptance of stakeholder capitalism is indeed chilling. It basically means that unelected corporations are partners in the regulation of markets which they themselves are participating in. Because the partnership between governments and corporations is one of equality, there can be no regulation by the govt over the corporations, and this logic then extends to international bodies like the UN as well. It is a betrayal of democracy but is not a recent phenomenon.
at

Saturday, November 13, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, November 13, 2021

How obvious does it have to be before even insouciant Americans realize that there is something seriously wrong about the Covid vaccination program?
 
One would think we are already past that point even for the mentally-challenged.
  • Media Loses Their Collective Minds Over Aaron Rodgers posted by Ben Swann from Sovren. My reaction: The billionaire's media are losing their collective minds regarding Rogers because they realize that sports (for profits) have always been a major way of distracting the public from the crimes of the ruling capitalist class, but now a major sports star has been caught up in this drama.
Because we are now seeing the effects of global warming which is putting the capitalist system in direct conflict with the ecological demands of nature, we are seeing geopolitical analysts and others attributing a conspiracy to the frantic cutbacks by major capitalists. I'm thinking of Engdahl, Michel Chossudovsky (I assume so, but he hasn't written much recently critical of global warming activists), and Mark Crispin Miller who are leading the charge against global warming from the left. They, like all old-fashioned capitalists, are seeing the basic conflict play out, that is, the basic conflict between capitalism and a sustainable planet, but are caught up in their basic loyalty to capitalism after so many years of capitalist indoctrination. 
 
This basic conflict will also affect leaders of mixed economies (China and Russia) who have learned that the only way to preserve their independence from the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire is to add capitalist practices to existing socialist components in order to out-produce and out-develop technologies of the capitalist economies of the Empire in order to survive. But, they too, will also be caught up in the confusion of this basic conflict.
 
We will also see others caught up in the confusion of this contradiction as the capitalist ruling classes try desperately to resolve this basic conflict. This confusion will also test younger loyal capitalist critics of global warming such as James Corbett, old-fashioned capitalists like Ron Unz, and Prime Minister Morrison of Australia. We will see billionaires, whose capitalist system have brought them extreme wealth and overwhelming power, desperately trying to flee the Earth as the obvious signs of destabilization of the climate become manifest: rising seas flooding major cities, inadequate supplies of food, increasing frequency of wildfires, extreme weather, etc.
 
I, after decades of following scientists, believe it is too late to save the Earth's habitat for humans and most other species.
  • Fake ‘Shoplifting Surge’ is the Just Latest in Crime Wave Propaganda by Eugene Puryear from Breakthrough News (Note: I am posting this website because its original origin from Punchout is carried on Itunes software which you may not have.) My reaction: I don't know what the actual crime statistics are, but there has been much hype about crime in the Minneapolis area (I live in southern Minnesota). I suspect that this has much to do with protecting police forces in the USA. For example, in Minneapolis, the result of the elections has rejected the establishment of a "public health approach to the delivery of functions by the Department of Public Safety (see"City Question 2 – Department of Public Safety"). On the other hand, I have a suspicion that desperation, which has affected largely working people since the pandemic, might be causing the elevating crime stats that have been so emphasized in media reports.
at

Friday, November 12, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, November12, 2021

There is a growing need for a real alternative to existing arrangements. The current situation is untenable at all levels. More and more people are rejecting the rich and their cartel political parties and demanding real solutions to the problems confronting the economy and society. Acting in the old way simply won’t work and doesn’t work anymore. People are disgusted with irresponsible and unaccountable leaders who can’t solve any problems. People are also tired of being reduced to vote banks for the parties of the rich. Constantly begging politicians to do the most basic simple things is humiliating, exhausting, and a massive drain on social energy that could be harnessed to expedite human-centered arrangements.
Why do Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela pose such an existential threat to the U.S.? Why are they able to unite all the wings of the democrat party and the republican party against them? It boils down to two factors. First, the power of their example in attempting to build independent, self-determining projects that center the material needs and interests of the people over those of capital. Second, the class warfare politics of the U.S. state.
  • The nature of neoliberalism and its consequences. This post features Chris Hodges conducting an interview with Professor Wendy Brown, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University. using RT's channel on YouTube (25:19). My reaction: Prof. Brown seems to miss the fact that capitalism naturally evolves into anti-democratic fascist governments as the capitalist ruling class, that consolidates and concentrates wealth and power, feels increasingly threatened by ordinary people. Thus, she criticizes neoliberalism and the economic slide of lower classes, but seems, like many dissidents, to accept earlier forms of capitalism, as does Hodges.
How is the economy working for you? We are told this is the time of the Great Reset and Build Back Better. What does that mean to you? How the does the Green New Deal play into this? It seems the rich are only getting richer. What about the rest of us? [my edit]

CrossTalking with Jeffrey Tucker, Joti Brar, and Tony Ewing.
Time and time again we see banks launch voluntary climate initiatives which seem to be aimed purely at reaping PR benefits now, while postponing all concrete action as far into the future as possible.
at

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, November11, 2021

I don't usually post articles from right-wing media corporations; but because the ruling capitalist class has switched from backing the right-wing political party to confuse their subjects (US citizens) from the Republican to the Democratic parties, I feel justified in posting this article. The ruling class changed their backing--of the two political parties that they allow to dominate elections--because they have so ruined any weak tendency for the Democratic Party to back issues favoring the working class and they felt safe to do so. 
 
And it worked! The ruling class has so confused the Democratic electorate, which traditionally supported civil rights and workers, but now supports the dictatorial measures against working people. Furthermore, to add to the confusion, they have also supported the spread of fake ideologies such as critical race theory and "woke" policies via their corporate media.
 
Whether the highly exaggerated and poorly managed pandemic is over is a moot question that will be decided in the future.
This time the corporate faction of the Democratic party deployed the Black political class and its media acolytes to neutralize the rising cry for social democracy and anti-capitalist politics.

What we are seeing is the failure of Democrats’ cynical post Obama strategy of focusing on racial grievance discourse divorced from materialist policy. That strategy was supposed to both shut down the possibility of any social democracy, or Sanders-type politics that would benefit most Black people, while secondly using Blacks as crash test dummies to fight Trump. That strategy has blown up in the Democrats face and is doing nothing but feeding the reactionary right.
 
My reaction: Although he clearly touts social democracy (capitalism with a comprehensive welfare system), he clearly sees through the fake progressives in the Democratic Party for what they are. Can I conclude that most African-American people see this as the usual fakery from the ruling class? Maybe, but I have doubts. I only wish that he and the Black Agenda Report also would see through the fakery of social democracy as the solution to the natural tendency of capitalism to turn into fascism where you won't "own", i.e., control anything (including your lives), but "you will be happy".
... a profound dilemma is visible from the momentum of this movement: a large bulk of liberal politics is driven by precisely the opposite impulses. The most loyal Democratic partisans are frequently venerating prosecutors, advocating for harsh criminal punishments, championing punitive theories of criminal law that have long been rejected by liberal jurists and, above all else, often demanding the longest and harshest punishments in "the carceral state” for a large group of people.

Why are so many Democrats simultaneously chanting radical criminal reform slogans to abolish or greatly reduce the police and the prison state while simultaneously demanding harsh prison terms for so many people under the classic law-and-order ideology they claim to oppose?
 
My reaction: There won't ever be police reform under the capitalist system with the ruling class exploiting those below them, and is worst the farther you go below them. In addition, the ruling class depends on police forces to enforce their interests. Police forces protect the safety of the ruling class, not ordinary people.
  • The Great Resignation from RT's channel on YouTube (00:59). My reaction: Under capitalism, the "owner" can purchase Robots and realize profits from their use. Working people like scientists and technicians built these robots to replace you.
I think the statement introducing this essay is "spot-on": "Bloomberg CIA Apologia Accidentally Vindicates China’s Strict Domestic Policies". 
 
But it does more. It reveals what their response is to this failure to wreck harm on China. The ruling class's directors want greater results from their "intelligence" agencies, and they are willing to spend money to get greater results as is indicated by this paragraph from the Bloomberg article:
 
Some of the people interviewed by Bloomberg said that such announcements are more symbolic than substantive and need to be backed up by increases in spending and staffing to have credibility.
 
I agree with her statement near the end of the essay which states: 
 
So Beijing’s anti-corruption crackdowns, widespread surveillance and strict control over Chinese society is making it harder for the CIA to undermine that nation, and now the CIA is expressing its frustration through the billionaire media. Which shows that China is acting entirely in self-defense when it implements these policies.
at

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, November10, 2021

  • What Is France Hiding in the Sahel? by Clinton Nzala from Mint Press News (based in Minneapolis). My reaction: I hesitated to post this article because Americans tend to ignore events in other countries. They do not see these events as related to their own issues and lives. But the latter definitely are related because the transnational ruling capitalist class is in control of the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire, and as such, they oppress, exploit, and fool Americans as they do to people in other unfriendly or third-world nations. In this report we see that France sponsors terrorists while opposing Russia's help to fight against these terrorists. There is little doubt Americans have been, and are, experiencing ruling class terrorist-sponsored organizations (FBI, CIA, and other so-called secretive "intelligence" organizations) here in the USA. The ruling class uses these organizations to spread fear, and fear is only one primary weapon (ignorance is another one) used against working people.
  • 140 Degree Days Are Coming featuring Eugene Puryear in a podcast (11:26) reporting on a study from the journal Nature and two other topics from Breakthrough News.
  • Pfizer Whistleblower Exposes Compromised Vaccine Trial Research featuring Jimmy Dore from his channel on YouTube (16:44) mainly reads a report from the British Medical Journal citing many errors in the research done by Pfizer on their Covid vaccine. Dore also reads reports from other sources that are contrary, or raise questions, to what Fauci, corporate media, and other medical authorities advise. 
Philanthropies incubate and fund campaign groups and NGOs to serve particular narratives. Talking points embedded with fallacious logic are easily passed on and bolstered by access to market reach and attention metrics. Greta, AOC and XR are the three most significant examples of high-reach climate warriors. All three share a blind spot that has been crucial to controlling the narratives about what climate action should look like – they all completely ignored the output of the IPCC Working Group 3 (WG3) on mitigation.
  • Monday~Anomalies by John Allen from his weblog on Medium ($5 subscription required). 
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Tuesday, November 9, 2021

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

  • Losing Militarily & Strategically, in Order to ‘Win’ Politically (but Ephemerally) by Alastair Crooke, a British political analyst, from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: Crooke focuses on three current emphases that the US foreign policies are currently pursuing: Taiwan, Israel's plan to harass Iran, and US support for Ukraine's harassment of the breakaway and Russian-speaking Donbass. He concludes with this paragraph:
Success stories are needed in the wake of the Kabul withdrawal débacle, and this Administration is in a tearing hurry to give Biden the semblance of foreign policy success. Yet, the combined weight of such fragile, unfinished and strategically disconnected ‘successes’ will at some point badly rebound, in ways exceeding what a dysfunctional U.S. system can bear. 
 
My reaction: I think that the transnational ruling capitalist class of the Empire has passed its apogee to world domination, and I see in the future a slow decline in the power of this de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire. But that won't keep the ruling class from engaging in fantasies like the Great Reset, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and vacating the spoiled Earth to migrate to other planets. Hopefully in the meantime, they won't harass these nations enough to provoke a major war-conflagration.
If only the American people tried to find the time to read books! The ruling class doesn't yet censor such books, but they make them harder to find. The latest book in this category is what this article refers to. I'm referring to "husband and wife duo of Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, authors of a new memoir which illuminates the real story of Afghanistan, were two such journalists who learned just how the sausage is made in the nation’s capital with the connivance of the yellow press." The book is entitled The Valediction: Three Nights of Desmond.
 
However, Parry gives you so much more. If you read this article, it can give you a picture of how policies are made, and have been made, in contrast to how corporate media reports them. Parry, a retired investigative journalist currently living in Germany, expands on the book to leave a coherent picture of the last 50 years of US involvement in Afghanistan and beyond.
 
I've wondered if Max Parry is related to Robert Parry, also an investigative journalist and editor of the Consortium News until his recent death.
  • A Look Back At Russiagate by Bernhard, a German independent blogger, from his weblog Moon of Alabama. My reaction: This is a glaring piece of evidence that US major media corporations are not in the business to inform you, but to fool you.
Meanwhile the deep state actors who had pushed Russiagate all ended up in lucrative positions at CNN and elsewhere. The 'journalists' who ran the fake stories got promoted.

Those who had been right were given no recognition.
Robin Aitken says there is an “acceptable and polite” view of world events which is dominated by media liberals. The former BBC employee warns that we must all be wary of the “hidden persuaders” that operate in all forms of news. 
 
My reaction: Aitken means when he says "media liberals" that the ruling transnational capitalist class has taken control of all major media corporations in the de-facto US/British/Zionist Empire. He essentially means that younger journalists employed by the BBC (and all other major media corporations in the Empire) should keep their mouths shut if they want to get ahead in major media. 
Some of the world's largest chipmakers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have responded to a contentious US government request to submit chip data ahead of the Monday deadline, in a move described by industry observers as yet another instance of US hegemony that coerces global semiconductor supply chains to bow to arbitrary requirements way beyond commercial standards.

The information request, seen as a possible maneuver to target China, a thorn in the flesh for US desire for chip leadership, could create more problems than it solves, analysts said, noting that the affected businesses can resort to legal action in case of damage caused.
 
Later the article reads:
 
The request, unveiled by the US Commerce Department in late September, smacks of an attempt to contain China's tech rise under the disguise of addressing chip shortages, according to industry insiders.
Just once it would be great to hear widespread discussion of US election rigging in the same alarmed tone we hear mass media concern trolls talking about nations like Nicaragua, Bolivia or Venezuela. ....

Whenever I raise this point I get people saying “Well the US doesn’t imprison its political opposition leaders like other tyrannical countries!” That’s only because the US doesn’t have any political opposition leaders. There are no politicians in America with any political purchase [purpose] who oppose the ruling power structure in any meaningful way. All true opposition has been quashed; .... [my insertion for typo error]
  • The Truth About COP 26 featuring Lee Camp, using his channel on YouTube (04:28), trying to make humor out of the capitalist meetings of COP 26.
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Monday, November 8, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, November 8, 2021

Dr Peter Doshi, associate editor of the British Medical Journal(BMJ), discusses the total lack of scientific process behind the development and roll out Covid vaccines in a meeting called by Senator Ron Johnson on the topic of vaccine mandates.

Peter Doshi is an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research in the School of Pharmacy and associate editor at The BMJ. His research focuses on policies related to drug safety and effectiveness evaluation in the context of regulation, evidence-based medicine, and debates over access to data.
What else can you expect of "news" from the ruling capitalist class and their media corporations? 
 
I spent nearly 30 minutes trying to ascertain the ownership of NBC which is theoretically owned by Comcast. I couldn't remember the name of Tegna Inc. which owns the NBC affiliates, but I finally discovered it on my own website using search engines. (You may have glanced at the black and white notice following many of their programs on NBC affiliated stations.) It was conveniently located near the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA, but has moved further down the road to Tyson, VA (you will see Langley in the right corner).
 
You can see the complicated picture of how the ruling class and their major corporations manage to hide their concentration of ownership/control of media.
  • Young Voters Done With Biden & Democrats featuring Jimmy Dore commenting on some news from his channel on YouTube (11:33). My reaction: Dore argues for a new party forgetting once again that the ruling capitalist class has an iron hold on US elections. The chances that a new political party can challenge the established two parties is infinitesimal.
Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock discusses CSIS's (Center for Strategic and International Studies) links to the CIA, as well as how it's managed to shape public opinion and foreign policy with regard to the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]. CSIS is an influential think tank that produces reports on the DPRK and China and is funded by military contractors like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, as well as the governments of the US, Japan, and UAE. [my insertion]

To listen to the full episode, subscribe at: http://www.patreon.com/radiofreeamanda
  • COP26: Emitters Sue To Chill Climate Measures by Manuel Pérez-Rocha from Consortium News. (Note: I tried and failed to access this article on Inequality, the original source as I always do, so I had to post it from Consortium News.)
  • NATO Malign Influence Corrupting Serbian Academe by Stephen Karganovic from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: Dr. Miloš Ković, a faculty member in the history department at Belgrade, Serbia, simply opposes the NATO-sponsored re-writing of history. 
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