Mainstream media has covered Hong Kong’s protests extensively, but ignored Haiti, Ecuador, Chile and elsewhere
It’s all kicking off everywhere in 2019. Haitians are revolting against a corrupt political system and their President Jovenel Moïse, who many see as a kleptocratic U.S. puppet. In Ecuador, huge public manifestations managed to force President Lenín Moreno to backtrack on his IMF-backed neoliberal package that would have sharply cut government spending and increased transport prices (FAIR.org, 10/23/19).
Meanwhile, popular Chilean frustration at the conservative Piñera administration boiled over into massive protests that were immediately met with force. “We are at war,” announced President Sebastián Piñera, echoing the infamous catchphrase of former fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet. Piñera claimed that those responsible for violently resisting him were “going to pay for their deeds” as he ordered tanks through Santiago. (See FAIR.org, 10/23/19.)
Huge, ongoing anti-government demonstrations are also engulfing Lebanon, Catalonia and the United Kingdom.
PBS NewsHour (10/5/19)
Yet the actions that have by far received the most attention in corporate media are those in Hong Kong, where demonstrations erupted in response to a proposed extradition agreement with the Chinese central government that opponents felt would undermine civil liberties and Hong Kong’s semi-autonomous status. A search for “Hong Kong protests” on Oct. 25 elicits 282 responses in the last month in the New York Times, for example, compared to 20 for “Chile protests,” 43 for Ecuador and 16 for Haiti. The unequal coverage is even more pronounced on Fox News, where there were 70 results for Hong Kong over the same period and four, two and three for Chile, Ecuador and Haiti, respectively.
This disparity cannot be explained due to the protests’ size or significance, the number of casualties or the response from the authorities. Eighteen people have died during the ongoing protests in Haiti, 19 (and rising) in Chile, while in Ecuador, protesters themselves captured over 50 soldiers who had been sent in as Moreno effectively declared martial law. In contrast, no one has been killed in Hong Kong, nor has the army been called in, with Beijing expressing full confidence in local authorities to handle proceedings. The Chilean government announced it had arrested over 5,400 people in only a week of protests, a figure more than double the number arrested in months of Hong Kong demonstrations (Bloomberg, 10/4/19). Furthermore, social media have been awash with images and videos of the suppression of the protests worldwide […]
The Most Revolutionary Act 
It shows how insulated we are, in our various niches. If it weren’t for blogs like this and reporting from different places from around the world, how would we know that this revolution in consciousness is world-wide?
At the same time, I doubt any society has figured out the key ingredients for returning to sanity.
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“returning to sanity” is an interesting choice of words, Kathatrine. When was the Earthian race ever living in sanity? Certainly not in any time of our recorded history. Sanity has to mean no oppression, no exploitation, no rape, no murder, no killing, no war, no genocide… no misogyny or racism. The world of man has always been awash in personal and collective violence, man against nature, man against man. Seeking to redress the madness, sometimes its been nature against man, but life here has always been adversarial. It’s understandable that thinking people want to see that change but looking back to a time of sanity is the wrong way to go. The species called man needs to change its own nature, period. If it does not, it well complete its extinction event.
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Sha’Tara,
I suspect there is a lot of unrecorded history in which man lived peacefully, more or less, with the natural world. According to Jared Diamond (“Guns, Germs, and Steel”), writing was developed for taxation purposes, and that means governments, and that means power, control, warfare, thus the rest of the book’s title.
It’s tempting to be a misanthropist, when our historical records are written and interpreted by misanthropists, but that doesn’t make them right. They wouldn’t even recognize sanity if they saw it.
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I’d like to agree with you on this but then comes the billion dollar question: what changed? How did it change? Why did it change? Okay, so three billion dollar questions! I look at the depravity and corruption that are the sustaining forces of this civilization of MAN and I must know what evil sustains this and why the vast majority accepts it as either good or inevitable. If I try to go there my mind goes, “error, error, does not compute.” Before we can truthfully claim that once upon a time man was gentle, kind, understanding, empathetic we must backtrack along civilization’s history to that denied place where it all went south. To ignore that place of interference is the same as denying the Holocaust. It behooves us to find and expose that denied, hidden, crucial segment of man’s history.
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My thoughts are only hypothetical, so I can’t prove any of it, but just suppose there were once (and may still be) isolated pockets of sanity and compassionate exchange. If they were truly smart, they wouldn’t advertise. Maybe they communicate telepathically and fly under the radar, so to speak, like living in a parallel universe, with no obvious contact with the earth we know.
Maybe this idea is fantasy or science fiction, but I suspect that each of us has a vision of that reality buried somewhere within, and it could flower in the right environment.
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Yes indeed that’s the reality I live in. But it lies outside the bounds of Earth so isn’t much use in dealing with Earth problems. I, like my heroine, Antierra (if you are following that) refuse to take the easy way out. I must know what happened to cause the beyond sad conditions we must exist in today. Who! Did this to us? What are they, where are they? Can we get free from them, or it, and if so, how do we go about it? Logical questions, I think.
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I suspected you are living in a reality like that so knew you could relate. I believe it’s important to exteriorize it, as much as possible, to show it can be done.
I confess I haven’t been reading the Antiterra Manifesto, except in bits and pieces. On-line reading is hard on my eyes, so I only spend an hour or two on line on any given day.
I can say I haven’t taken the easy way, but life has beaten me up repeatedly, so I’ve changed my strategy but not my purpose(s).
I believe the forces of darkness are not people or entities or groups of entities, but thought forms that have grown stronger by intensity of belief in them. Because they are so insecure with an unrecognized sense of powerlessness, they seek the illusion of power through force and deceit.
I haven’t discovered an antidote to the fear, but if I do, I’ll let you know.
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Quote: “I believe the forces of darkness are not people or entities or groups of entities, but thought forms that have grown stronger by intensity of belief in them. Because they are so insecure with an unrecognized sense of powerlessness, they seek the illusion of power through force and deceit.”
I am very familiar with the concept of thought forms as they are a constant part of our mind “set” in that they interact with our own thinking process. Where do weird or strange thoughts come from? You’re a committed pacifist yet one moment you want to kill someone. These aren’t your thoughts but there they are they need “exorcising”. Sometimes, certainly for me, it’s the opposite. I get an urge to help someone to the point of selling my house and giving them the money, all of it. Again, such thoughts are not normal. Such “help” is pointless for it violates common sense. Not my thoughts, then, but someone else’s. We are never alone. We are hosts to many living thought-forms from other entities, some more powerful than others. Many are like those spamming phone calls trying to con us into buying stuff, or joining groups that have nothing to do with the real us. Not all thought forms though are forces of darkness, no more than the people around us. I now know how to get rid of the unwanted ones. Don’t feed them Matrix crap: fear of false hopes.
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I can accept that, especially since I believe mental telepathy exists like static in the atmosphere. anything highly emotionally charged can pass through filters of consciousness, especially if it can find a compatible receiver.
I guess it’s worth it to fine-tune one’s “receiver” in order to tune in to the most “enlightened” messages, but then one has to decide what constitutes “enlightenment.”
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When I speak of thought forms, I mean actual living entities interacting with us through our minds. An open mind will receive these, a closed mind will not. The problem as you point out is deciding what constitutes “enlightenment”. For me it’s relatively easy: I filter all “messages” through compassion. Does it fit with what I understand compassion to mean? Yes/No. For me enlightenment has to mean compassion.
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It may be a fine point, but I don’t think of thought forms as living entities but rather the cloud of emotions stemming from the thoughts of one or more individuals. For instance, I believe the inchoate fear that shrouds the current world is a collection of fearful thought forms held by individuals as well as the collective.
I’m not sure what constitutes “enlightenment” for me. Maybe it’s compassion, but that “Aha!” moment usually involves a sense of having put the pieces of information together in a new way or of coming to some new understanding of old ideas.
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Briefly, on thought forms. We seem to come from different worlds here. When I engage “thought forms” these are not from “local” sources. The thought forms I speak of are from “dead” people, spirits of the dead, or voices of the dead. They are also from others such as angels and demons and in some cases from existing personalities but not of this world and not of my current time. What you describe I tend to relegate to group-think and I pay little heed to that, or at least hope I don’t give that any credibility. Group-think is what feeds the system, keeps membership in churches and political parties; funds organized sports, including the murderous NRA, Ku Klux Klan, the military supplied with willing brain dead bodies even without a draft and finally at the bottom of the pile, the mobs. What I do has been called “channeling” when I did it in New Age groups. It’s probably fairly accurate, except that I willingly share mind space with some entities. That takes discernment and discipline…
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The thing is, there are no “pockets” as such but everywhere there are INDIVIDUALS who carry an antidote to the powers of oppression. We must learn to outgrow the need to look for collectives. Any collective is fodder for the Matrix. All collectives, beginning with the man and woman who join in an institutional marriage, or even common law relationship, are earmarked by the Matrix for control. Only an individual can escape the programming if she/he so desires. Then it’s a matter of paying the price in being ostracized, misunderstood, mocked, denigrated, called a conspiracy nut, accused of ulterior motives. A self-deprogrammed person is likely to lose everything of value within the status quo. I’ve been through it and it was both, devastating and exhilarating. Power doled out by the Matrix is cheap, stale, weak, mentally unhealthy and ultimately pointless and self-defeating. Self empowerment is the opposite. It clarifies, encourages, emboldens (in a positive way) and instructs beyond anything academia could ever hope to do. It teaches the disciplines of detachment and compassion. It frees the mind to “see” outside the blinders of the system. But what I learned is, only an individual can experience this, never the collective. The self empowered individual is the ultimate anarchist. Any group formed purportedly to teach or promote the concept of compassion will get nowhere. At best it will substitute love for compassion and not realize they’ve made a complete about-face and are once again mind slaves of the Matrix with a feel good philosophy already practiced pointlessly by tens of thousands of similar organizations.
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I’m confused. Are you saying a self-empowered individual must act and think alone? Is there no possibility of finding similarly minded others who can inspire even greater self-empowerment without unhealthy ties?
Do you ever find people who inspire you? Isn’t self-empowerment the ability to discern healthy influences within the detritus of humanity? I have more questions but will save them for now.
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I can interact with your questions (from my perspective of course) but it would it not be better, methinks, to change venues? Would it be possible to post them on your blog? Just a thought.
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Everything is grist for the blog mill, This is a large and expansive subject, so it seems important to find a focus and keep it short enough to provoke self-empowering thought.
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Oh, yeah, now where were we? Or did I satisfy your questions already? I can’t even remember. Let me go back up the comment queue and see… You asked: “Do you ever find people who inspire you? Isn’t self-empowerment the ability to discern healthy influences within the detritus of humanity? I have more questions but will save them for now.” I don’t see self empowerment as denying other people’s influence, or interacting physically and mentally with others. I see it as only operative through detachment, as in, “believe all things, believe in nothing.” If (for example religion and religious people – and not a few from the opposing side!) I am not allowed to express my own thoughts on an issue, or to question an accepted paradigm (believe in Jesus or be damned; evolution is a proven fact yet remains a theory(?), within a certain framework, or mindset, then I have no choice but to refuse to participate. As for inspiration, I have drawn heavily from certain philosophers and change agents but I’ve learned to adapt their thoughts to mine and eschew any system that developed from their writings or recorded examples. As a self empowered being I automatically eschew all forms of religion, including science when expressed as a secular religion, i.e., used to denigrate other religions’ particular beliefs. Yet, I often interact with people of faith, even letting them go on about their beliefs and my “heretical” and dangerous position vis-a-vis their God. I question, challenge, try not to browbeat. If one is truly self empowered, one has NOTHING to defend, not even one’s self, and that is true power.
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For now, have you ever seen the movie, “V for Vendetta”? I think, when viewed educationally rather than for entertainment, it answers many questions on how a self empowered individual lives her/his life and what constitutes interdependence. It’s a question of power, individual versus collective. All overt power is driven and fed by collectives. Mob to Empire, the same principle obtains. By definition, the self empowered individual does think from within, and operates on the basis of that thinking.
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I haven’t seen the movie, but I do see a similar dynamic in the concepts of individual versus delegated power. The collective, as you put it, tends to delegate its powers to a “leader” or group of “leaders.” Governments, corporations, businesses, educational institutions, religious institutions, and basically all institutions depend on delegated power to make decisions for the group and those they claim power over.
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Hence why there is such a desperate need for individuals to become self empowered and detached from all those institutions and I include marriage in the things we need to get away from.
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Katherine, activists of my generation have always known we were being lied to. Before the Internet and social media we relied on shortwave radio. Before the World Wide Web took off, we were all signing up to learn about setting up pirate radio stations with low power transmitters.
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I didn’t have that kind of network. I think I learned about the lies bit by bit on my own when I repeatedly saw the inconsistencies between what people said and what they did.
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On a molten rock spinning in a universe of molten rocks there is no “sanity” and NEVER has been.
It is just a series of destructive behaviors which when the “reasonable” mind activates the only response is a new wave of destructive behaviors.
It seems to be the nature of “mankind”.
A “revolution in consciousness” is the only way out and that can only take place from the inside out! Not from the outside …………
It is a quiet revolution and it is a slow process.
There’s the rub.
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That’s the revolution I’m fighting, Tube, and it concerns only me. I choose how deeply to involve myself in it, in the same way I choose, at every election, to vote for myself as the only legitimate representative of what I live for.
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Sha’Tara, Tube, I personally believe there is an element of sanity in collective decision making, where everyone has a say and the consensus is truly genuine. I’ve only ever experienced it on the community level, among the the activists in the small town where I currently live. We’re still learning how to do it properly, but the only alternative I see to community life is living by myself in the bush and I wouldn’t be very happy doing that.
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People have to evolve as self empowered beings, able to live together interdependently as opposed to codependently. I believe the difference isn’t subtle. I consider myself a self empowered person. I live in a medium size city and I interact interdependently with my neighbours – not codependently. Too often, if not always, the collective seeks to make the rules for everybody, hence why you have “red states” and “blue states” and gerrymandering in the political sphere. In my experience I see the collective as a powerful negative factor that uses force, particularly the force of money, police and wrathful gods to make individuals comply. In certain times, those who did not comply, who stood out, were hunted down, tortured and killed all for the empowerment of the collective. The collective always sidles up to the “winners”, the rich, the already powerful. The world would be totally different if only self empowered individuals lived in it, people who lived their lives by choice for the betterment of their world, and if those lives were guided by the concept of compassion. Then you have no need for overt force – neither government, nor police, nor military, or internal security forces. These are the status quo and they operate to maintain a condition of exploitation, sexploitation, oppression, suppression and this always leads to bloodshed. Without the collective you cannot have collectively drawn blood baths. You don’t need any top-down collective rule to make things work, you just need common sense and empathy. My opinion.
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