A MYTH OF OUR TIMES .....

 

It's been circulating for years now, and we all sort of know it, with our own medicine, food and drinks labels and expirations, or when we advise someone close, but we keep this little guilt feeling, we keep thinking that maybe we're not being safe enough, maybe we are doing the wrong thing after all, and not playing it safely, maybe we are harming ourselves and our close ones. It's all brain washing and intentionally misguiding us and everyone else world wide, it's all for profit, for greed, for maintaining a mentality of  abundance, all habits and convictions that we all humans cannot afford anymore on our planet. 

We are talking about expiry and out of date medicines, even most canned food and beverages, and certain other products. Everything nowadays is by law labeled with an expiry date, whereby even the wording used in most products are misleading, best before... use before... sell before... freeze before... discard after... while serious research by many experts including some French researchers, including Dr. Christiane Laberge, who concluded lately; Most medicine, if not all keep the same effectiveness 4 years after expiry dates. 

We all somehow know these facts but never express them loudly, because big pharma companies don't like it nor allow it, they brainwashed us all, including official government agencies, through the years to ridicule and ignore such ideas and words. To think that any medicine after its expiry date will automatically turn into some type of deadly poison, Even when we realize how huge of an ecological waste it is, how empty it renders our pockets. 

The U.S. military had over a billion drugs pilled up, and they wanted to know if it was true that it had to be disposed of by the indicated dates, they tested and retested everything, only to get to the conclusion that only one product of them all lost some of its potency and minimally reduced its effectiveness after 4 years. 

Many serious studies, published in many scientific journals, assert that the shelf life dates on all our medicines are imposed by manufacturers to sell as many products as possible and regularly renew their stocks and profits. In fact yogurt products that were analyzed and tasted 57 days after the last authorized consumption date indicated by the manufacturers on the packages, only indicated; Same flavor, same freshness and no health problems by consuming them. 

The same goes for vacuum-packed meats, chicken or fish, that can be safely consumed 15 to 20 days after the displayed expiry dates. As well for dry cakes, vacuum cookies of all kinds, confectionary, chocolates, pulses, pasta, rice, lentils and many other, they can all go for way longer periods than indicated. These products are edible and keep their same flavor 3 to 4 years after their packaging expiry dates. 

Manufacturers and pharmaceuticals are organizing, lobbying and pushing for these food and drugs  waists to increase their profits and continually satisfy their increasingly demanding CEOs and shareholders, the same goes with pills of different uses, it is intentional by their manufacturers, while the only difference is that 3-4 years after expiration, the efficiency is slightly reduced for few of them, around 95% instead of the original 100%. Even antibiotics have exactly the same reduction numbers. 

So before we all throw away our Tylenol, Aspirin, Ibuprofens, Imodium, vitamins and the like, let's make sure we're not only making big pharma richer while throwing away good and efficient stuff. They are only making more money at our expenses. These policies proved so effective, and the consumers so gullible and willing, that it wouldn't be surprising to see them replicate and be applied on other products, your car will expire after 5 years, your TV, your computer, your phone even your cloths will all serve for short, well studied periods. Anything and everything could expire after a short while, and be harmful if not discarded, so be careful and obey the rules. 

In the U.S. we pay the highest prices for medicine, and it was for long years a national demand to reduce and regulate it, at least by allowing Medicare negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, still it was defeated lately in the Senate, by few sold members who obstructed any thought of negotiating , importing or relying on cheaper generic products, just to show us all how powerful these manufacturing entities are. 

         As always , my gratitude to all my good readers, stay safe and well.                

WE ARE DEAD SET TO BLOCK AND DESTROY .......

Let's counter the massive lobbying efforts , taking place these days, by big pharma, big tech, big oil, coal and gas and the chamber of commerce, and as always of course the war machine and arms industries and the relatively newly created military contractors, they are all fighting hard to suppress and gut the 10 years 3.5 trillion$ proposed by this administration, let's demand the legislators include the billionaires wealth tax in the build back better legislation now. 

Let no one kid you, or try to convince you of the contrary, but taxing billionaires wealth and big corporations is incredibly popular in most States, and more so in congressional swing districts across the nation. But billionaires, big corporations and special interests wield and exert too much power in D.C. from Congress to Federal employees and Pentagon leaders, many are under the special influence of the lobbying machine, that's why legislators and Congress will act sometimes in different directions from what their constituencies want them to do, and only when they hear clearly from us all, do they think and act rightly. 

The billionaires income tax bill is our chance to raise enough funds, hundreds of billions of Dollars, from the richest Americans, and use those funds to invest in critically needed programs for the vast majority of working families including direct unemployment help, child tax credits to the needy, universal pre K. for  3-4 years old kids, and free community colleges, making health care, elder care, child care, education and housing more affordable. As well as many more needed social and equitable distribution of wealth programs. 

On another level, I wonder why don't Democrats in Congress eliminate the obstructionist filibuster, which is not mentioned in the constitution, not a law, just an internal rule serving minority parties to delay or kill legislations. As Democrats will never be able to pass very needed and essential legislations and bills. Abolish the filibuster now and let Republican legislators reestablish it when they win back the Senate or both Chambers of Congress. 

To show how far Trump's influence has spread in the general ultra right populist movement and the red GOP States, listen to one of the candidates for lieutenant governor in the State of Georgia, a Mr. B. Miller, he went on a talk show and said;" We have attracted too many people to the State of Georgia, that don't think like us, if they don't think like us, they need to assimilate into our values and our culture. To my ears, it sounded like; There's no place in Georgia for people of color, black, brown or any shade, no emigrants from anywhere, no LGBTQ, or non Christians, or anyone who votes for the wrong party. That's not the kind of leadership America deserve if we want to move into a successful  new century. 

All of the above leads us to wonder if we're really any closer to ever passing the Biden's agenda and the build back better act, that cover essential investments in care, climate, and citizenship, the build back better act will be the biggest achievement our country will achieve for many decades, it's packed with benefits for working families and middle classes, from free community colleges to substantial cuts in child care costs, lower prescription drugs prices, while expanding Medicare and protecting social security, fix immigration rules, and the most important is that if we don't legislate to have these funds for these programs they will slowly and surely be swallowed by the war and arms machines and their lobbies, and will keep circling within the same powers and riches. 

America needs a collective action now, to profit from the actual peace times, to pass this bill. Everyone including the media should ship in, and talk openly about its benefits, and that the cost of it is 350 billion Dollars per year, less than half the Pentagon annual budget, and not keep referring to it as a 3.5 trillion devastating cost. We have to convince all our legislators in Congress to put aside their personal benefits and corporate affiliations, and choose all together America first, and I'm talking about legislators from both sides and not only one side. 

Americans suffer while Democrats debate among each other, and Congress end up voting purely on partisan basis, and blocking most bills, just to satisfy political agendas, election goals and personal gains, Americans are sick and tired of watching Republicans and pseudo Democrats tramp on the legislation their communities urgently need. We used to be the light house of democracy to the entire world, look at us now playing like a typical third country cheap politicians and politics. 

          As always, my gratitude to all my good readers.    

                   

IS THERE SOME WAY OUT ???

 Unlike Europe in general, the U.S. uses lots of white supremacy and superiority rhetoric to justify many political moves, and definitely battling it is not the same as advocating or adopting it. We proudly use voter suppression laws wherever we can, using any tactic or twist we find in the book, but we do not realize that passing laws to prevent voter suppression is not the same as passing laws to suppress it. Fighting for our democracy is not as seeking to destroy it.

The media and lots of centrists from both major parties, try constantly to equate both sides. Calling one side the left and the other the right, with different degrees and ranks. Suggesting there's a fair moderate middle between hate and inclusion, between democracy and protofascism, this is naïve, misleading, dangerous and morally wrong, let's not all fall for it. 

Now is not the time to hit the pause button on social projects, nor sit and have endless discussions about what's what and who's who, now is the time to take bold actions, courageous decisions, work hard and rebuild period. Democrats need to unite and vote like Democrats. They have the House, they have the Senate, they have the presidency and the White House, they should act like it, and deliver real results for all Americans, in fact the Federal infrastructure bill must be big, bold and green. It must cover the real needs of the country and its people, and clearly profit from a lull in the war machine and its advocates. 

Back in Feb. 2016, I published a blog entitled; "Bankruptcy, insanity or hysteria" I was describing a cruel situation that hasn't changed a bit in 5 years, and surely not in the past 75 years, it worsened, while the entire world sit silent, watching while occasionally smiling. the poet/writer Sam Keen reminds us of the cruelty and brutality of wars, more so endless wars; " When your icon of the enemy is complete, you will be able to kill without guilt, slaughter without shame." 

Indeed, imperial colonizers don't have any concern for other human beings, surely not for the colonized, so they never think of improving people's lives by a better health system, culture, education and nation building, not even any civilian infrastructures creation, they only look at perpetuating imperialism, occupation and wars. There are special beneficiaries, armament dealers, and special war contractors, politicians and generals, usually from both sides, who will do the impossible to maintain the game. even if and when it turns against their own people. In America, Israel and Russia, the war machines are thriving and striving, while their people are getting neglected and impoverished, turning the war machine into a permanent enriching and feeding tube for the few.  

Couple weeks ago, U.S. Green Berets were training special forces troops in Guinea, when trainees apparently slipped away to launch a military coup. operations like these and the situation of post Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, as well as other unidentified spots of the world, are not proof of failure of the U.S military machine, nor its manipulators, as many annalists suggested in the after math of the Afghani pullout, they are signs and evidence of the system working exactly as designed, and its evolving cycles through the years. 

It is high time we benefit from this short lull, and willingness of our actual administration to not further feed the special war interests and turn to America, as a matter of fact, once every 20 or 30 years of correct rebalancing might prove beneficial.

   My usual profound thanks to all, please stay safe and well.                

REINVENTING OUR PRIORITIES.....

 

As the Biden administration is trying to repair strained global relationships while dealing with infra-structure bills, new democracy protection bills, a possible debt ceiling crisis and a threat of  government shut down and default, plus the ongoing pandemic, and more of a persistent political partisanship, blocking blindly whatever is good for the American people and the country, even if it leads to tragic economical and instability steps. The country faces another big ongoing dilemma, the military and the for ever war-machine, that was beefed-up during the previous administrations, with unprecedented budget increases and unrealistic spending on military weaponry, special interest war industries and military contractors.

For the record, Congress is debating and voting on a three-quarters trillion dollars Pentagon budget, for context that's more than the military budgets of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran combined, in fact it's more than the next eleven largest countries military budgets combined, how on earth did we get to this point ?? When even back in the fifties president Eisenhower warned the country from a too powerful military weapon's industry and an insatiable war machine.  

Since the start of the war in Afghanistan, Pentagon spending has cost the Americans 14 trillions of their tax dollars, serious estimates are that one third to one half of all this money went straight into the coffers of  arms manufacturers and private military contractors and their joint lobbyists. The lion's share of these moneys has gone basically to just 5 major corporations, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. 

The 75 billions in Pentagon contracts received by Lockheed Martin in fiscal year 2020 alone is over one and a half times the entire budget for the State Department and agency for International Development for that year, which totaled a mere 44 billion dollars. These merchants of war and death have completely flipped our country's priorities and essential social programs. It's clearly needed to be fought tooth and nails. 

Weapons makers and military contractors, and Pentagon generals have spent and benefited over 3 billion dollars on lobbying Congress and Pentagon over the past couple decades, they have an army of 700 lobbyists pushing their pro-war agenda, that is more than one lobbyist for every single member of Congress. 

The last 60 years should have taught us that the last and least thing that will build security and peace is forever war, and stupid adventures, brutality and colonial imperialism, it leaves unbearable costs in treasure and blood. Even our closest pseudo ally Israel, is learning this basic lesson and recalculating. 

Over 66% of Americans clearly agree that it was a good idea to end the war in Afghanistan, and the ongoing one in Syria and Iraq.  Congress has spent billions of dollars each year fueling arms manufacturers and military contractors. With the disastrous U.S. war in Afghanistan behind us, the very last thing we should be doing is heaping more desperately needed taxpayer money into more weapons of war and more adventures . 

We have other obligations, domestically and internationally, we need to protect ourselves and help protecting the world from catastrophic effects of climate change, and pandemics that have no boarders, and within our own boarders to fix our decadent infrastructures, our archaic health care, and our old fashioned education system, the list goes on and on. These are not exactly the things those five mega corporations are lobbying for. It's high time we all stand up for their nefarious work. Let's all help build a more peaceful and prosperous for all world.

     All my usual thanks to my good readers, stay safe and well.                   

SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES ......

Despite American admonitions to avoid estranging Arab partners like Saudi, Egypt, the Gulf Emirates and Morocco, with too much democracy, righteousness and human rights issues, Israel has already adjusted to the region's shifting geopolitics, even to some eastern big powers like China and India, China just opened the first private port in Israel over American objections. Clearly despite Israel's frequent demands that the U.S. continue to defer to the Israeli government's interests and goals. Tel Aviv will not do the same for Washington nor necessarily reciprocate with American goals and long foreign politics. 

Although unprecedented, the last Israeli moves toward some Arab countries and the east in general pursuing its own political and economic agenda reveal a widening divide between the two long lasting pseudo allies, as well, the U.S. must take the same independent approach. It is long past time for American to get out of Israeli direct influence on our foreign policies. And for our successive administrations and presidents to prioritize U.S. interests over those of Israel. 

The outbreak of our efforts and diplomacy under Israeli dominance in the Persian golf and the greater Middle-East , plus our adventures in Iraq and elsewhere, always under Israeli influence, that contributed heavily to Arab animosity toward Iran, as well as toward America. Ironically only when the U.S. decreased its influence on all countries around the gulf they started coexisting with more pragmatism and realism. 

While Chinese and Russian influence in the entire region expands, and the U.S. is left to watch from afar. meanwhile Israel is adapting itself fast to these new geopolitical new games. As neither China nor Russia will give in to Israel's own interests, as it was with America for long decades, maybe this is why Israel is nervous and shifting policies. It's important though that no adventure of anyone's making to topple the game could drag the U.S. into a new war for anyone's sake or benefit. 

Apparently, the U.S. removed most of its missile defenses from Saudi Arabia in the past several weeks, leaving the kingdom and its neighbors feeling vulnerable to different missile attacks from Yemen and elsewhere, as well the administration's releasing a classified FBI report revealing contacts between the 9/11 hijackers and certain Saudi officials, it all confirms the U.S. further detachment from Saudi and the area in general. It is confirmed that American forces have withdrawn from at least 3 bases in eastern Syria. Not to mention the possibility of reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran. Even the sudden decampment from Afghanistan and handing it to the Taliban to annoy and threaten all its neighbors, and create some welcomed instability in central and western Asia. All these are clear indications that the U.S. foreign policies are moving to a more independent and not as in thrall to Saudi or Israeli hegemonic preferences. 

The Arab-Persian discord, suited perfectly Israeli hegemony and the U.S. war machine manipulators, and the Neocons under Israeli dominance, for these reasons the divide is growing, and Israel is showing us its teeth, anger and impatience. President Obama in a 2016 speech asserted that "the Saudis and Iranians need to learn how to share the region," Israel, China and Russia now, are all looking for shares of the new divided cake. 

A writer, Sam Keen, reminds me of the policies that Israel plays while the U.S. totally obliged for many decades, he says; " When your icon of the enemy is complete,  you will be able to kill without guilt, slaughter without shame." That has been the motto of our politics for too long, it's high time for a change of philosophy, we have enough problems on our own plate internally. 

My, as always, many thanks for your time. stay safe and well.                           

Power .....

September 6, 2021

Patrick Lawrence asks some pertinent questions of the American people.

Are Americans going to sit around indefinitely eating potato chips while the State Department and Treasury starve Venezuelan children? Are Americans going to play video games while Israel fires U.S.–made missiles into Damascus from Lebanese airspace—two violations of international law?

Are Americans going to sit around watching corporate sports while the Pentagon drone-murders entire families and Congress votes to increase its post–Afghanistan budget? Are Americans going to sit on their sofas while the United States condemns several generations of Cubans to lives of desperation because they have chosen to live in a socialist republic?

Are Americans going spectate on their sofas while the CIA and other rogue intelligence agencies subvert the Republic of Nicaragua, the Syrian Arab Republic, and any other nation that resists American hegemony? Are Americans going continue stuffing their faces with Cheetos, Hot Pockets, and Bac–O’–Bits while the Saudis use American–supplied bombers and bombs to drive Yemen into a state of famine and reduce its people to  Dachau-like skeletons? 

Are Americans going to sit around silently while no-neck generals push the U.S. relentlessly toward military confrontations with China and Russia, two nuclear-armed nations? Are Americans going to shop on Amazon while The New York Times, CNN, and the rest of the monstrous propaganda machine cultivate their ignorance—purposefully, knowingly, and with malign intent—by way of gross omissions and outright falsehoods as to America’s international conduct?

Are Americans going to sit around worrying about their lawns while climate change burns half the country, floods the other half, and a federal judge tells the Biden administration it is obliged by law to auction new oil– and gas-drilling leases on hundreds of millions of acres? 

Are Americans going to read The New Yorker and The Nation while mainstream journalists cheer the creeping suppression of independent media and post-adolescent know-nothings in Silicon Valley are authorized to censor their speech, what Americans read, and—it will come—what Americans think?

Are Americans going to sit around dribbling on their shirtfronts while Julian Assange, Daniel Hale, Steven Donziger, and other courageous people acting in their behalf are made victims of extravagantly corrupted judicial systems? 

Are Americans going to remain silent while millions of them are malnourished and evicted from their homes in the name of the market god? Are Americans going to sit around while millions more get sick because they can’t afford perfectly ordinary medical care and those who could remedy this crisis are paid by insurers, hospitals associations, and drug companies to refuse to do so? Are Americans going to sit around while Big Pharma treats a global health crisis as if it were simply an eternal profit center?

Are Americans going to sit around stuffing their faces with chlorinated chicken, Velveeta, and Pepsi while corporations colonize every minute of their lives and every cell in their bodies? Are Americans going to sit around soporifically watching television while Rachel Maddow takes home $30 million a year for turning news into a Barnum and Bailey circus? 

Are Americans going to sit around watching Walt Disney movies while Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez and other such “progressives” betray every voter who got them into office? Are Americans going to sit around talking about their IRA accounts while a dense web of mind-manipulating institutions, corporations, corrupt pols, and the national security state totalizes its grip on power?

Not one year into the Biden presidency, the mind regurgitates. The mind dreams of exile in the way all those principled anti–Cold War people expatriated during the 1950s, having had enough. 

And the mind wonders.  When?

When are Americans going to stand up? When are Americans going to clear the litter millionaire bums have left on their village greens and reclaim their public space? When are Americans going to stop indulging the weak-minded fiction that they are powerless?

When are Americans going to transcend the atomization of American society systematically inflicted upon it since April 30, 1975, and learn again to speak and act for the commonweal? When are Americans going to present themselves with dignity to show they have regained their self-respect, their respect for those who have to look at them, and their respect for their reawakened civic selves?

When are Americans going to figure out that a global class war rages and that race is a subset of class and not the other way around? When are Americans going to stop bickering about pronouns, gender preferences, bathroom doors, bronze statues, identity politics, and all such distracting rubbish?

When are Americans going to read the scholarly definition of fascism and then look at themselves in their mirrors? When are Americans going to dismember the scam economic “model” that produces and reproduces billionaires and an ever more impoverished majority?

When are Americans going to admit to ourselves that America’s nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, drones, bombs, and landmines are the root reason all these weapons proliferate globally? When are Americans going to tell the Pentagon, “That’s our money.” When are Americans going to demand radical action to counter the climate crisis and change their lives—joyfully and with commitment?

When are Americans going to impose civilian control over the CIA and the other appendages of the “national security” octopus? When are Americans going to say, No!” to subversive “democracy promotion” interventions in other nations? When are Americans going to reject the Russophobia and Sinophobia their “leaders” and their clerks in the press malignly stir up? When are Americans going to object that the U.S. started and prolonged the Cold War because the Pentagon needed it and defense contractors profited from it? 

When are Americans going to turn off their televisions? When are Americans going to stop eating Fritos? When are Americans going to stop bothering to write their congressmen?  When are Americans going to stop pretending their political process is intact and voting matters?

When are Americans going to stop pretending Joe Biden is mentally competent? When are Americans going to stop pretending Joe Biden is the second coming of FDR? When are Americans going to stop pretending Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Ned Price are anything more than programmed robots? 

When are Americans going to recognize that The New York Times is now a propaganda organ and the future of journalism lies in independent media?

This article by Patrick Lawrence who is Salon's foreign affairs columnist, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer, he authored several books.

My usual many thanks to all.  

A NEW MENTALITY .....

 

Less than a year after a clear majority of Americans across the country delivered a resounding defeat to Donald Trump in the 2020 elections, Trumpism has not stopped rearing its ugly and obstinate presence in almost every state of the Union. The ex president is announcing full throated endorsements of many candidates for different positions all over, diminishing the chances that Republicans with integrity and better social understanding are being able to get elected. 

He is with his machine of extremists and lackeys destroying any chances of hearing the real voices of the Republican party, representing almost 27% of American voters, he is with his oligarchy and family members and big big money from corporate and extreme rich billionaires as well as special interests, they are systematically turning the party into a rich man and special interests organization, to shape and legislate strictly for their benefits, while turning the rest of Americans into cheap tools and robo- workers and soldiers ready to serve their interests and profits, no matter what this absolute majority pays or sacrifice for these goals. 

Leaving Trumpism and antidemocratic fascism unchecked in any corner of the country shouldn't be an option, and is to be fought ideologically and politically by all means, if we want to preserve and maintain a good free America, a prosperous to all America. One example of what and how these tactics are working, is taking place nowadays in Virginia. 

We have soon in VA, an election coming for governor and many executive members for the state, the Democrat candidate is an ex governor known for his rationality and attention to all Virginians and their needs. The Republican candidate is a big rich man who was hand picked by Trump for the post of governor. Mr. Glen Youngkin who pledged to spend 75 million$ of his own money fortune to buy the governor's seat. 

One should ask, who's Donald Trump in politics to decide who's who, more so in local politics, except to insure more lackeys and followers willing to serve and facilitate his political agenda. The second question would be; anywhere in the world when a politician spends lots of his own money on an election, he or she expects to get it back at least doubled within the life of the position, so is Mr. Youngkin looking actively to make 150 millions or more within his tenure ?? 

No one is a saint, but to go all the other way to devilish behavior and acts shouldn't be the policy of the land in the 21st century and beyond, let's leave these tactics to some failed countries, the Levant come to mind, with Lebanon and Syria leading. It could lead to disastrous situations and total chaos for all. 

Basically the mainstream media machine have for long years operated on the assumption that there are always two sides to every story, and that their job is to represent the balanced reasonable center, well that is not true anymore. Today in America one side is trying to protect voting rights for all, and the other side is trying to suppress votes because it's more advantageous to them. 

One side is advocating for science and the other side is pushing pandemic conspiracy theories and climate denials. One side wants the rich and corporate taxes reduced or eliminated, while the other is advocating for universal healthcare, free education for all and more affordable prescription medicine. Equating them all is misleading and dangerous, it will kill democracy and the well being of the majority of Americans. 

As we should all keep fighting against abhorrent wealth inequality, and the money grab of power and politicians, we must fight and resist media inequality and all its misleading arms. And as the saying goes; "Why are guns good, sex bad and God seemingly okay with it all."                                                     As always, my profound thanks for your time, stay safe and well.