But for now, let me repeat: the world’s richest 85 individuals do not have the same amount of accumulated wealth as the world’s poorest 50 percent. They have vastly more. The multitude on the lower rungs—even taken as a totality—have next to nothing.
— Michael Parenti
Sign the petition: Don’t let House Republicans undermine the IRS for the benefit of the rich and powerful.
Republicans are trying to cut $80 billion in recent investments designed to strengthen the IRS and its ability to crack down on millionaire, billionaire, and corporate tax cheats through the Inflation Reduction Act.1 In other words: As per usual, Republicans want to issue handouts to their wealthy donors and leave working families in the lurch.
In 2019 alone, the richest 1% of households evaded $163 billion of the total of unpaid or underpaid taxes that year. When we allow the ultrawealthy to evade paying their fair share, we place that responsibility on regular working people. Donald Trump’s recently released tax returns are a clear example of this corruption and greed. His returns expose overseas bank accounts and manipulative real estate evaluations that effectively allowed him to dodge taxes. This is exactly why Democrats included funding for the IRS, to ensure there were people within the agency that would hold the wealthiest people in this country accountable. We cannot allow the GOP to tank our efforts to lessen the tax burden on the working class.
Fun stuff, you know, since we are getting close to USA shooting nuclear weapons, utilizing the dirty tricks of CIA and false flags and dirty bombs. You know this country’s history, yet the Democrats, the MoveOne outfit, is going for the One Percent.
You know, since these companies are as honest as a nun (not). Imagine, the amount of US taxpayer money paying for fraud, crimes, endless and meaningless and worthless reports, hearings, white papers, investigations, stalling tactics, cover-ups, PR spin, all of it, including the dirty, polluting, community-breaking externalities of these corporations. And how many of these corporations have GOVERNMENT contracts in the hundreds of millions and billions?
How many dual-income earners in the Five percent — $208,000 x 2 – $416,000 yearly income — have trouble sending their kids to Yale and Harvard, uh?
The book, Dream Hoarders tells a picture of those Five and Ten Percenters and the Twenty Percenters x two incomes ($97,000) = $195,000. But here, the irony, at the most elite-sucking, exceptionalist outfit locally, Aspen Institute:
Now, now. I have a 77-year-old fellow with all sorts of medical operations under his belt driving a bus, me as his monitor. There are older people driving school buses where I live, one aged 81. You know, high winds, in a tsunami zone, earthquake zone, king tides, ice, fallen trees, fallen power lines, rain rain rain. You know, that precious cargo — children — and we get $19 an hour, with three cameras on board, a tablet that marks our stops and time, and, well, you can imagine the lack of trust this huge corporation has in us, the lowly guys and gals. Precious cargo my ass!
Truckers in the world, got .06 (cents) a mile in the 1960s. And when you are owner-operator, you pay pay pay for expenses, upkeep, maintenance and more. In the old days, the idea was to get to New York from Portland, Oregon, as quick as possible with that load of seafood. One fellow told me he took ZipLock baggies with him to urinate on that 72-hours, one-way from Oregon to NYC. And, the pills. The uppers. Keeping awake.
This is, alas, Capitalism with a capital “c” for corruption, collusion, chaos, criminality, contraband, crassness.
But alas, MoveOne is going after the One Percent, because of course, all those Five Percenters working for the One Percenters in high level jobs, all those 10 Percenters who are hoarders and vote to not have an extra percentage of tax put upon them, all the Eichmann’s and Faustians, all of them, love the idea of becoming rich and famous too, or just rich. They think being part of the 80 Percent is a crime against their egos and sensibility.
There is only so much of the good money to go around to the One Percent and up to the 19 Percent, right? Just talked to a 51 year old who gave me a ride back home since my ride was indisposed in Newport. I had to get to the bus driving gig. I stopped someone coming from the hospital, and he gave me a lift. He grew up in Toledo, Oregon, and had a year’s worth of wages saved up for Oregon State University, but he opted to work. As a lineman for the local central utility district. His brother went to college, and even called him a loser. Just a few years ago, the brother apologized to this man, who has worked 32 years for this company, and he said he’s making $150,000 a year as he is in management. The brother never got that income with his college degree.
Yes, there have to be options for young people. Yes, everyone needs to go to a cool college, for history, for the arts, for writing, for sociology. Yes, there should be contruction courses in college. Yes, there should be a way to get those who might have a proclivity for hands-on high IQ stuff to get that hands-on education, but all junior and senior high school students should be exposed to Oceanography, Orwell and Organic farming. In addition to, Reading and Writing, but also, learning what soil is and is not. What a forest is. What the jet stream is, and what weather is and is not. Hands down, the only way humanity is going to solve the crimes of capitalism and the savagery of capitalism and the barbaric acts of the One Percent and maybe another 5 percent, is to arm ourselves with thinking, caring, community-driven people.
Out here in Rural Oregon, we have those rugged (sic) individuals looking for acres and a place to put some chickens and cool motorcycles and jungle gyms on, and a place AWAY from humanity. Imagine that.
Some of those homes I pass by in the rural landscape are 6,000 square foot lodges that would look like they fit in Aspen or Jackson Hole.
Here it is, then, the shifting baseline disorder. Up is down, and somehow, Nazi History is Okay History. Ukraine is a country with a violent and racist history, and now, worse than ever. But these kids and these linemen, well, they do not want to know about THAT.
As we drain the tax coffers for Zelensky, for all those military industrial complex big boys and little ones.
This is fact — Russia-Soviet Union beat the Nazi’s then:
The Battle That Changed the Course of WWII: 80th Anniversary of the Soviet Victory at Stalingrad
On February 2, 1943, Nazi forces trapped in the ruined city of Stalingrad (modern-day Volgograd) by the Soviet Red Army surrendered, marking the end of one of the bloodiest and most intense battles in history – the Battle of Stalingrad.
During the course of this battle, Soviet forces managed to trap a substantial force of Nazi soldiers inside the very city the latter wanted to capture. The Soviet’s also managed to repel all attempts by the rest of the Nazi war machine to relieve their trapped comrades, and to finally break the enemy’s will to resist.
This triumph allowed the USSR to seize the strategic initiative and effectively turn the tide of the entire World War II, paving the way for the eventual defeat of the Nazi Germany a little over two years later. (source)
A mass grave of Red Army soldiers, executed on orders from Franz Halder, at Stalag 307 near Dęblin, Poland.
Don’t let MoveOn fool you — Liz Warren maybe a super capitalist, but that means she is for great wealth misdistribution, great land exploitation, the Monroe Doctrine on steroids, and of course, money, missiles and mush for Ukraine.
Michael Parenti — Peeling back those Shifting Baselines!
The world’s 85 richest individuals possess as much wealth as the 3.5 billion souls who compose the poorer half of the world’s population, or so it was announced in a report by Oxfam International. The assertion sounds implausible to me. I think the 85 richest individuals, who together are worth many hundreds of billions of dollars, must have far more wealth than the poorest half of our global population.
How could these two cohorts, the 85 richest and 3.5 billion poorest, have the same amount of wealth? The great majority of the 3.5 billion have no net wealth at all. Hundreds of millions of them have jobs that hardly pay enough to feed their families. Millions of them rely on supplements from private charity and public assistance when they can. Hundreds of millions are undernourished, suffer food insecurity, or go hungry each month, including many among the very poorest in the United States. (source)
Most of the 3.5 billion earn an average of $2.50 a day. The poorest 40 percent of the world population accounts for just 5 percent of all global income. About 80 percent of all humanity live on less than $10 a day. And the poorest 50 percent maintain only 7.2 percent of the world’s private consumption. How exactly could they have accumulated an amount of surplus wealth comparable to the 85 filthy richest?
Hundreds of millions live in debt even in “affluent” countries like the United States. They face health care debts, credit card debts, college tuition debts, and so on. Many, probably most who own homes—and don’t live in shacks or under bridges or in old vans—are still straddled with mortgages. This means their net family wealth is negative, minus-zero. They have no propertied wealth; they live in debt.
Millions among the poorest 50 percent in the world may have cars but most of them also have car payments. They are driving in debt. In countries like Indonesia, for the millions without private vehicles, there are the overloaded, battered buses, poorly maintained vehicles that specialize in breakdowns and ravine plunges. Among the lowest rungs of the 50 percent are the many who pick thru garbage dumps and send their kids off to work in grim, soul-destroying sweatshops. (source)
Yah, I am training to be a school bus driver. I’ve written about it in previous pieces, and that’s First Student, a foreign outfit in 49 states, 7 Canadian provinces, and it’s an equity firm out of Belgium. Bidding on school district transportation contracts far and wide, and alas, this Belgium company is getting paid by guess who?
USA and Canadian taxpayers footing the bill and reaping the poor services. This is what they call the public-private arrangement, again, what is a low level form of socialized payola for private companies while the taxpayer is screwed. As if the public and our governments and our states and our national funding can’t take care of OUR own children’s food, education, and transportation needs: we have to go to a private equity fund to handle schools shuttling. How long will I last is a crap shoot, since this is it for Lincoln County — no luck getting past interviews for county, city and state jobs as a case manager or services coordinator, even though there is that great 10 million shortfall of men dropping out of the workforce.
Oh, shit, I’m almost 66, with too many college degrees and a resume way too long to get very far.
Ahh, I’m also a social worker, educator, writer, journalist and even someone in urban and regional planning, but I can’t get past the interview stage. Missing men, well, there are many reasons for this new phenomenon. In the uncritical thinking USA, we will not get much deep analyses, though, just plain black and white rationales.
*****
The gender gap in college enrollment has been growing for decades and has broad implications for colleges and beyond: a loss of enrollment revenue, less viewpoint diversity on campus, and fewer men in jobs that require some college education. Some academics want to make clear that just because women outnumber men in college it doesn’t mean that gender-equity issues no longer remain.
This collection of Chronicle articles features news stories, analysis, advice, and opinion essays, including several articles that sounded a warning years ago. It also looks at how some colleges are trying to draw more men of all backgrounds — and help them succeed once they get there.
Section 1: Why Don’t Men Go to College?
Section 2: How Can Colleges Draw More Men?
Section 3: Deconstructing the Gender Gap
Don’t get me started on the nanny state, the reverse sexism, the anti-feminism bullshit female empowerment. Don’t get me started on the battle of the sexes, and don’t get me started on the sheeple aspect of education, social work, and nonprofit work. Don’t get me started, man.
I can go down a thousand rabbit holes or warrens, but the thing is I come back out, revitalized, smarter, and, sure more pissed off. This is the state of the world, under capitalism. A Belgium company in the USA and Canada is monopolizing on school transportation. No union shop, $19 an hour here in Lincoln county where home prices and gasoline and food are outrageous and where other districts might pay more per hour.
Again, it’s a bunch of older folk, mostly women, driving buses at age 67, 71, 78. What the hell is that about?
I have also been a substitute teacher in this district, and I’ve written about that too: “Take Down this Blog, or Else! No job interview, no job offer, targeting by city, county, state honchos, watched by the pigs, shadowed by all the sub humans.” Of course, I was and still am mad as hell at my banishment teaching, and can’t accept it, or take it. Even writing this will get me scrutinized by those overlords of the HR subhuman species who spend countless millions of dollars a year on software applications that do snazzy background checks, credit checks, employment checks, reference checks, drug checks, and of course, in my case, Google Scans/Checks, looking for any anti-this or anti-that diatribes or even plain old inverted triangle journalism.
Let’s scoot over to the issue of the failing male, the males in the womb, those just out of the womb, and then the developing baby, child, kid, teen and we end up with 355 million Americanos and a shit load of chronic illnesses for EVERYONE, including the poor child, babes in the woods. The top ten:
What are the 7 main types of learning disabilities? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that developmental disabilities occur among all ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups. Children from ages 3 through 17 frequently have one or more developmental disabilities, such as:
ADHD
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Cerebral Palsy
Hearing Loss
Intellectual Disability
Learning Disability
Vision Impairment
Developmental Delays
In particular, psychology professionals should study these seven learning disabilities:
Auditory processing disorder. …
Language processing disorder. …
Nonverbal learning disabilities. …
Visual perceptual/visual motor deficit.
Types of Learning Disabilities
Dyscalculia A specific learning disability that affects a person’s ability to understand numbers and learn math facts.
Dysgraphia A specific learning disability that affects a person’s handwriting ability and fine motor skills.
Dyslexia A specific learning disability that affects reading and related language-based processing skills.
Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities Has trouble interpreting nonverbal cues like facial expressions or body language and may have poor coordination.
ADHD A disorder that includes difficulty staying focused and paying attention, controlling behavior and hyperactivity.
Dyspraxia A disorder which causes problems with movement and coordination, language and speech.
So here we are at, now, in a society with so many epigentic, developmental, gestational, chromosomal and neuro disabilities. So many youth are faced with a lifetime of struggle, even before crawling, and then in pre-K and then K12, and then as adults. If this were a socially just society, there would be trillions spent on finding out the causes and effects and then the effects as new causes for new effects on the individual gestating, and what it is that makes this such a prevalent issue in our Western Society. Schools are warehouses, for sure, and the school to prison pipeline is not some goof-ball concept. We’d be looking hard at the chemicals, the stressors, the mother and father and their own stressors. All the toxins in air, water, food, drugs, including EMFs, and just the lack of nutrition, the fatty liver disease in 1/3 of folk, and the failing sperm counts in men since 1950, and, well, the discussion of who is that village that takes to raise a child.
Everything in capitalism is ANTI-health, ANTI-human, ANTI-Learning, ANTI-community engagement. More and more children, and yes, mostly boys, are monitored in the classroom, those prisons, and the effect or affect is that there is little significant learning and developing going on inside the school and their brains. They are a nerved up/out or nervous wreck, and they are watched and graded and sent home with behavior reports.
Now is the time to pity the child. Our children, and of course, all those children hit with the wagers of war, the wagers of sanctions, the wagers of economic and health and food sanctions. Depleted uranium or lead in the pipes. All of those realities also tie into the flagging mental health, the growing pressures put upon mother, father, child, grandparents, the lot of them in education, et al.
This is the sickness of America:
In solidarity with Cuba, leaders and activists of all Left and democratic parties of India welcomed Aleida Guevara in Surjeet Bhavan.
To a packed hall, Aleida said that it is one thing to talk about an economic blockade and quite another to live under that blockade.
She narrated how no country was ready to even give easily available medicine for a five-year-old child only because of the fear of America. In spite of not being a milk producing country, Cuba supplies one litre milk daily for all children and the aged, by importing it from New Zealand which is expensive because of the high transportation costs.
They were forced to buy milk from far away New Zealand, as their northern neighbour, US is not ready to trade with Cuba. The sixty years of illegal and inhumane US blockade has taught Cuba to spread humanism through sending doctors to wherever they were in need. Cuba is just 90 kilometres away from the mighty imperialist super power US. Even then it can’t be defeated since it believes in the scientific principle of people’s unity and those who are united can never be defeated. “El pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido” (The people united, shall always be victorious). She said Cuba took arms for peace and defending their motherland. She asserted that Cuba believes in standing up for equality against any kind of barbarism in the world. Thanking the people of India for always standing with Cuba, she said that the people of Cuba will always treasure this solidarity and value it immensely. (source)
Milk, man, and the United Snakes of America is so so powerful, going after children far and wide. You know, Cuba never attacked the USA, never went to war, and alas, this is the power of the dirty capitalists, war mongers and some sick psychopaths. Medicines, medical equipment, air conditioners, food, and energy. This is the way of the rat, the USA RATON.
The entire psychiatry and psychology and sociology of oppression is what runs modern Western society. There are no right ways now to raise children, to support families, and to build community. It’s all about the private sector sucking up as much as the public sector can regurgitate to this thieves. While the children suffer, and while the entire shooting match is toast as we in a culture of pollution and gestational crimes and constant bombardment of children with poisons — from those in the plastics, chicken nuggets, lawn sprays, all the off gassing, all those artificial flavors — find it harder and harder to survive all the death traps that we know this society is unleashing at an earlier and earlier age.
We are in an age of behavior adjustment, brainwashing, mind control, sinister Stockholm Syndrome, general anxiety disorders created by social media and generalized hatefulness from the legislators and two-bit politicians. Checked out or challenged just looking at a book, we are in the new normal of trillion$ for the pigs of war, for SWAT teams, for the opposition to beat us down, to implode the family, to eradicate the human and humane family. These kiddos come onto the bus with behavior plans, with their little classroom check slips for the parents to mull over at home.
Mr. Hill stops reading aloud to his 4th grade students and turns to Anisa. “Anisa, you’re off task. Change your clip. I asked you once and you are still digging in your desk. Walk over and change it now.”
Anisa stands and walks across the classroom. Several of her peers make condescending comments under their breath. Anisa moves her clip from green to yellow and returns to her desk and puts her head down. Her nonverbal behaviors indicate that she’s angry, hurt, and frustrated.
A few minutes later, Josh raises his hand. Mr. Hill calls on him and Josh responds, “Anisa is off task again.”
Mr. Hill looks at Anisa and says, “Again? Please change your clip to red. One more problem and it will be another call home. You have to learn to pay attention.” (Source: Tear Down Your Behavior Chart! Lee Ann Jung Dominique Smith)
Freire gives the term “freedom” a specific meaning: it is the freedom to critically question and change the world. In other words, a person is free when they are able to understand and change their own conditions.
For Freire, education and oppression are connected, since education can be used either as a tool for oppression or as a method of liberation from oppression. Freire distinguishes between a pedagogy (a way of practicing education) that serves oppressors, and one that helps oppressed people understand and change their society. According to Freire, “freedom” (the freedom to critically question and change the world) requires people to gain a new understanding of how reality works. Changing the dominant understanding of history is a key part of this process. Freire sees education as useful not just for individual growth, but also for achieving social change. To expand on this point, he discusses social change as a necessary tool to achieve freedom and overthrow oppression. Within Freire’s framework, systems of oppression try to prevent radical social change so that they do not lose power. Throughout Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire draws heavily on the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels—especially the concept of dialectics. A “dialectical” way of thinking starts with a “thesis” (an initial idea or proposition) and an “antithesis” (an idea that opposes or contradicts the thesis), and the interaction of these two ideas creates a “synthesis,” or a new idea that reconciles the conflict between the two original ideas. (some clipped notes)
*****
Feeling the burn yet, the absolute oppression instilled in the greatest country and system the world has ever seen?
Get a little primer on exactly what capitalism and inflation and the systems of Milton Friedman are all about here:
Hudson: Since the Democrats took power in the 1990s under Clinton, they’ve stopped the anti-monopoly regulation. They’ve stopped the antitrust laws from being enforced, and you have a great concentration of monopolies, and they can raise prices for whatever they want, as much as they want. For agricultural goods, the distributors have simply raised the prices without paying the farmers and the dairy farmers any more.
So when you say that inflation is only a monetary phenomenon, what Milton Friedman is saying is, “Don’t look at the power structure. Don’t look at how markets are structured. Don’t look at monopolies. Don’t look at how the wealthy corporations are inflating [prices]. Look at something that we can blame on labor.”
The inflation that Milton Friedman talks about — and you just mentioned my old boss’s boss Paul Volcker — is wages. So when the Federal Reserve talks about inflation, they say, “It’s really wages rising.” Well, we know that wages have not risen anywhere near as fast as the cost of living, so that can’t be the reason — that wages are rising.
But if you can claim that inflation is only caused by labor making too much money and hurting other workers as consumers, then you have the Federal Reserve able to come in and say, “We’ve got to have a depression. We’ve got to have unemployment. We’re going to raise interest rates because we want more unemployment to increase the reserve army of the unemployed so that wage earners will be so desperate for a job that they’ll work for less. And if only they worked for less, then prices will come down, if somehow the companies are going to lower their prices because they can pay their labor less.”
The pretense is that it’s all labor’s fault.
We are all on this behavior and consequence chart. We, that is, the 80 Percenters who have 8 percent of wealth in the USA, compared to the Point Zero Zero One Percent, the One Percent and 19 Percent holding 92 percent of the money-power-possession chart. We mustn’t act up, mustn’t question the boss, mustn’t wonder why the oppressors are our neighbors, the ones our taxpaying work funds, or why so many Americanos believe this is it for Nirvana — the USA, greatest invention in human kind since the wheel.
Oh, those progressives are capitalists to their bones:
Liz Warren shifted from supporting Medicare for All to advocating a two-phased approach intended to build support for a single-payer model (in which the federal government would provide health insurance for every person in the U.S.), by first creating a federally based plan to compete with private insurers and expanding access to Medicare.Elizabeth Warren Says She’s ‘a Capitalist To My Bones’ And Positions Herself as FDR’s Heir
And that is THAT capitalism —
“Inflammation is the body’s appropriate response to damage, or the threat of damage,” says Rupa Marya, a physician and co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition. “We’re learning that the social structures around us, the environmental, political structures around us, are tuning the immune system to sound out the full range of inflammation.” Raj Patel adds that “capitalism primes bodies … for sickness.” (“Inflamed”: Dr. Rupa Marya & Raj Patel on Deep Medicine & How Capitalism Primes Us for Sickness)
Imagine that, all those children, and I am not talking about those with allergies, with multiple chronic illnesses, including diabetes and asthma, caught in this vice which is CAPITALISM.
Daily, we are oppressed, and as the digital oppressors get more powerful, everything about us will be transhumanist, and we will be abiding by retinal scans, saliva analyses, galvanic skin response tests, and then the body will be the internet of physiology, the absolute bot world of nano things controlling the entire human experience, and that’s not just heart rate and BP, but thoughts.
Below, I find these on the bus floors much of the time. The children leave them in their desks at school. They are on the playgrounds with orange peels wrapped inside. Oh, the behaviorists. The mind benders. The psyops, the dead-end Americans, paying for the tools of Nazi War, and now, how many teachers are talking about the Doomsday Clock to their high schoolers, just to broach the issue?
Hell, people do not talk about Ukraine and the pimping of weapons of child-killing in public or at the workplace. These bosses, like the Belgium First Student honchos, send memos out on what can and cannot be said during election A or election B at the workplace.
And we wonder why so many neuro-normal (sic) people are checked out. Trauma: The Science of Stuck – Britt Frank, baby, trauma!
This is Startup to Storefront, and on today’s episode, we are unpacking the science of how to get unstuck. It’s no coincidence that that’s also the title of the book written by our guest today: author, psychotherapist, and trauma specialist, Britt Frank. Britt knows a thing or two about getting unstuck, as she has battled everything from meth addiction to sexual abuse. She emerged from that trauma with a new outlook on life, a Master of Social Work degree, and a desire to help others overcome their own hurdles. These hurdles vary from individual to individual, but when it comes to entrepreneurship, it’s not uncommon for someone to put up a mental blockade that prevents them from moving forward. Getting over this mental blockade that inhibits you from progressing forward is what we are dissecting today.
In today’s episode we discuss:
– Why you don’t need every friend to be a best friend
– How Covid didn’t create a mental health crisis, it just exposed the one we already had
– The power behind changing your why’s to whats. So roll up your sleeves and let’s start the process of getting unstuck.
So, there are no other ways to look at the lab-generated, multivariant SARS-2 than through the lens of mass murdering complicit media and the charlatans of propaganda, all in the employ of billionaires, millionaires and high income folks in this Big Pharma-Big Medicine-Big Feat triage of destruction? Who the hell with a normal-functioning mind believes that?
It’s a great piece here, at Gray Zone — Amid rising reports of vaccine-related menstrual disruptions, the CDC and FDA are dismissing women’s concerns and denying them information while corporate media pathologizes them in sexist fashion.
The writer drills down into the vaccine loving industries (ipso facto, thoughtful and investigative critical thinking maligning industries), and how women were not a big part of the mRNA trials (sic), and that the disruption of the reproductive system of a female ain’t no big thing, according to the FDA and Saint Fauci and Company. Imagine, the adverse effects of these shots, on everyone, and no fetuses. This Gray Zone article focuses on women, and the writer, Marcie Smith Parenti, looks from a feminist point of view, albeit, one flawed since she equates feminism USA style with supporting the Democratic party, AKA, War-Banking-Poverty Pimping Party, as equal in its profane treatment of humanity as the Republican party. Here, a quote:
I have five female friends who, after receiving Covid-19 vaccines, experienced disruption to their menstrual cycles. Their symptoms have included hemorrhagic bleeding lasting more than a month; heavy intermittent bleeding for four months; passing golf-ball size clots of blood; and extreme cramping, serious enough to land one friend in the ER.
Most of these women are in their 20s and 30s, and at least one of them thinks she might want to have children. She now worries that her symptoms might be the harbinger of long-term fertility problems. At least two of my friends have symptoms that have not resolved. All are feminists and have throughout the years been consistent Democratic Party voters.
Other women of childbearing age have reported becoming temporarily “postmenopausal” after their second mRNA shot; conversely, women in menopause are reporting suddenly beginning to bleed again; trans men on hormone therapy have also reported sudden bleeding. Apparently, the number of vaccinated women around the world reporting alarmingly disrupted menstruation is, to be conservative, in the tens of thousands.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, does not warn women who get the shots that they may experience a disrupted menstrual cycle.
The big issue and concern with this piece is that Parenti does not go into detail around the OTHER jabs that do not use mRNA DARPA-Mengele wizardry as the undergirding of the treatment protocols–
mRNA vaccine
A mRNA vaccine is made using mRNA that gives your cells instructions for how to make the spike protein found on the surface of the COVID-19 virus. After vaccination, your immune cells begin making the spike protein and displaying them on cell surfaces. This causes your body to create antibodies that can fight the COVID-19 virus.
Viral vector vaccine
A viral vector vaccine is made when genetic material from a COVID-19 virus is inserted into a unrelated, harmless virus. When the viral vector gets into your cells, it delivers genetic material from the COVID-19 virus that gives your cells instructions for how to make the spike protein found on the surface of the COVID-19 virus. Once your cells displace the spike proteins on their surfaces, your immune system creates antibodies that can fight the COVID-19 virus.
The Mayo Clinic lies here about the mRNA vaccine, and even this site doesn’t give the information on the alternative “vaccines.” But here, on this flagging blog, more information in a short screed than all of Mainstream Mush and Murdering Media:
What to know: The whole virus vaccine uses a weakened or deactivated form of the pathogen that causes COVID-19 to trigger protective immunity to it.
The two vaccines mentioned above – Sinopharm and Sinovac – both use inactivated pathogens, therefore they cannot infect cells and replicate, but can trigger an immune response.
3) NON-REPLICATING VIRAL VECTOR
Vaccines include: Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sputnik V (Gamaleya Research Institute)
What to know: This type of vaccine introduces a safe, modified version of the virus – known as “the vector” – to deliver genetic code for the antigen. In a COVID-19 vaccine, the “vector” is the spike proteins found on the surface of the coronavirus.
Once the body’s cells are “infected”, the cells are instructed to produce a large amount of antigens, which in turn trigger an immune response.
Benefits: Viral vector-based vaccination is another well-established technology that can trigger a strong immune response as it also involves both B cells and T cells.
What to know: The protein subunit vaccine contains purified “pieces” of a pathogen rather than the whole pathogen to trigger an immune response. It is thought that by restricting the immune system to the whole pathogen, the risk of side effects is minimised.
Benefits: The protein subunit vaccination is also a well-established technology that’s advantageous for those with compromised immune systems.
But reading Parenti’s piece, you can sense her socialism, her radical (root, fair, smart) belief that the wool has been pulled over the eyes of USA and Western societies Big Time by the war profiteers, and in this case, the war profiteers are those in this so-called war against a virus — Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Double Dealing. The planned pandemic that is, thanks to DARPA and the gain of function viral Mengele shit, is now an endemic — variants will come hell or highwater. What are we going to do about that? Boosters, straightjacket medicine — the resisters are the enemy. One Minute of Hate by Biden, that’s the ticket!
To many, this probably seems wrong-headed; and indeed, growing “scientific evidence” indicates it is a mistake. A recent University of Chicago and UC-Berkeley study found that women suffer higher rates of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical products than men, even when dosage is calibrated for differences in body weight. This is likely due to the more subtle dance of hormones that dictate women’s well-being, but the issue is very rarely studied.
It was not until 1993 that the federal government began requiring pharmaceutical companies to include women in their drug studies. And only in 2016 did the NIH begin to formally request that researcher grantees consider “sex as a biological variable” and specifically report on such findings.
Yet the fast-tracked Covid vaccine research skipped these provisions. Women were included in the initial Covid vaccine trials, however, none of these studies disaggregated research findings by sex.
Unfortunately, this is all tied to mind-stripping, and that Google guy, that celebrity in the movie, The Social Network, is being paraded around by lefties like Russel Brand. In that interview, Brand or the celebrity don’t look at what mind-stripping really does — not just scraping data and thoughts and emotions from people, the targets, but using that data to sway entire sectors of our lives, changing up to down, reality to fiction when it comes to regime change, the lies of Empire, the financial-AI-Wall Street thugs who want Cuba do go down, want Syria in flames, want Iran imploded by Israel’s nukes and alleged biological/viral/chemical bombs.
Russel Brand sometimes appears to be milquetoast, maybe, I don’t know, part of his UK roots, really, and this dude, Tristan Harris. You may recognize him from the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma.
Here Tristan explains how our attention is being mined and that we have now become the product.”
I watched the The Social Network. Bad all around, geared to a 6th grade reading level, really, and this Harris guy is quite the multimillionaire charlatan. He’s in the film, about 1/3 of the total running time. Now, big tech is a million times worse than this shit-show demonstrates, and then when you see take-downs on Harris, on the film, we get those other misanthrope elite thinking Ayn Rands piling on their own libertarianism, and some equate questioning the main thrust of The Social Network — that big tech kills — to those who pushed the movie, Reefer Madness — trying to emote fear into citizens against pot smoking fellow citizens. Wrong comparison — apples to pig skins.
Techies are more than just smart arbiters of tech-surveillance capitalism; there is something highly broken in many of them, and they should never be in a position of power, legal or otherwise, that is, many of us believe. They are their own demigods, and they believe that Digital Tech is no different than the technology that brought us the bicycle. Look at this mind numbing stuff here criticizing the documentary for all the wrong reasons, I believe — “The Social Dilemma Manipulates You With Misinformation As It Tries To Warn You Of Manipulation By Misinformation.”
Note: Netflix, the company which produced, distributed and widely promoted the documentary, is also arguably the first big internet company to spend time, money, and resources on trying to perfect the “recommendation algorithm”! That’s capitalism, folks!
Taking this to the next stage, Ollie, the violent video games.
Yeah, so violent, murder-seeped, war-mongering, racist interactive X-box games, come on, they have zero effect on the brains of punks and not-so-punky kids and adults who play them, and live them, and spend countless human life hours joy sticking with them (Not). Look at this spin, “We present you our “TOP 10 Brutal FPS Games of 2021 & 2022” for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, STADIA & PC” ranking list. Hope you enjoy it!”
Well, isn’t that capitalism — you are what you eat, what you breathe, what you hear, what you think, what you read, what you believe, what you do, what you make, what you destroy, what you hope for, what you demand, what you consume in general, none of that has any effect on humanity. That’s the basis of the techies who see these violent, misogynistic and racist “games” as basically just entertainment.
That is the big smoke and mirrors, propaganda, lie of capitalism. This is not a lie:
The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression; normative beliefs about aggression had a mediation effect on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, while family environment moderated the first part of the mediation process. For individuals with a good family environment, exposure to violent video games had only a direct effect on aggression; however, for those with poor family environment, it had both direct and indirect effects mediated by normative beliefs about aggression. This moderated mediation model includes some notions of General Aggression Model (GAM) and Catalyst Model (CM), which helps shed light on the complex mechanism of violent video games influencing adolescent aggression. (“The Relation of Violent Video Games to Adolescent Aggression: An Examination of Moderated Mediation Effect”)
Yeah, so 4 G, cell phones to the ear, all the EMF’s, now Internet of Things, Internet of Nano-Things, Internet of Biological Things, none of that create negative effects on humans, plants, animals. This is how these charlatans of the Mengele Brand work. However, let’s see where this takes us, RFK Jr.:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit published its decision Aug.13. The court ruled that the FCC failed to consider the non-cancer evidence regarding adverse health effects of wireless technology when it decided that its1996 radiofrequency emission guidelines protect the public’s health.
The court’s judgment states:
“The case be remanded to the commission to provide a reasoned explanation for its determination that its guidelines adequately protect against harmful effects of exposure to radiofrequency radiation…”
CHD Chairman and attorney on the case Robert F Kennedy, Jr. said:
“The court’s decision exposes the FCC and FDA as captive agencies that have abandoned their duty to protect public health in favor of a single-minded crusade to increase telecom industry profits.” (Source)
“The FCC will finally have to recognize the immense suffering by the millions of people who have already been harmed by the FCC’s and FDA’s unprecedented failure to protect public health. Finally the truth is out. I am hopeful that following this decision, the FCC will do the right thing and halt any further deployment of 5G.”
So, now, break out the masks, in my state, Oregon. Absurdity, and I have volunteer jobs, and the mandate is to have the masks on at interpretive centers, everywhere the public may walk into. I know for a fact after thousands of hours of research on the topic of mask efficacy and tertiary topics that these masks do not stop a virus. Truly. Alas, though, I can chuck everything by sticking to my guns and my knowledge base, or put up with a mask that I pull over (off of my nose) to breathe. Now, just applying for work, the vaccine passport will be mandatory. No passport, no job, no food, nothing. And these Democrats didn’t see this coming (bs), and now that it is here, Bring on the Stasi. No different than the white supremacist Republicans and their stupidity about racism, structural racism, structural violence, and the mis-history of their pathetic souls believing Young George Shall Not Tell a Cherry-Tree Chopping Lie. This country is diseased with infantilized thinkers, and putridity on both sides of the Apple Pie Red-White-Blue manure pile of political parties wafts in my air.
Danny does it well here, in the article at Black Agenda Report, “Critical Race Theory Debacle Signals the Collapse of the American Empire.” Old Stan and Ollie would be proud:
The GOP’s entire identity is shaped by white supremacy.
The question that must inevitably be answered is: where do correct ideas come from? It is clear they do not come from General Mark Milley. The U.S. military will not become less racist if it studies “white rage” because white supremacy is baked into the fabric of its very purpose as an institution. Correct ideas also do not come from the GOP, as its opposition to Critical Race Theory is based on the equally faulty and racist premise that “culture wars” are destroying what makes the United States “special.” Correct ideas are inevitably lost on dueling sections of a ruling class seeking to stabilize an illegitimate empire.
The people’s struggle to liberate themselves from systems of exploitation is the primary generator of correct ideas. Critical Race Theory’s growing influence correlates with the emergence of Black Lives Matter protests dating back to the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2011. The growth in the popularity of “socialism” can be traced back to the Occupy Wall Street movement and the struggle against union busting and austerity in Wisconsin, Chicago, and elsewhere. The history of class struggle, whether in the case of Black America or liberation movements abroad, is characterized in part by masses of people being propelled into a lifelong search for the correct alignment of ideas and actions that will bring qualitative changes in their conditions of life.
“Critical Race Theory’s growing influence correlates with the emergence of Black Lives Matter protests.”
The debate over Critical Race Theory will not resolve the contradictions that ensure Black Americans make less than sixty cents for every white American dollar , the U.S. military receives trillions to bomb Black and brown people abroad, and racist New Cold War tropes continue to be recycled to justify policies such as the extremely counterproductive sanctions on China’s solar energy sector . Super exploitation and war are all the American Empire has left to offer. A huge challenge for the class struggle in the United States is the fact that there are more corporate consultants and Democratic Party operatives posing as “anti-racist” than grassroots leaders and organizations prepared to take on the urgency of the political moment. Liberal elites, even when they tolerate criticisms of capitalism and racism, ultimately suppress or smear the revolutionary leaders and movements that inform revolutionary struggle. This is why establishment adherents to Critical Race Theory can offer anti-capitalist critique while scantly supporting organizations fighting to free U.S. political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal whose activities remain criminalized by the state.
The collapse of the condominium in Florida serves as an apt metaphor for the system of imperialism as a whole. Our search for correct ideas exists within the confines of the crumbling edifice of the American Empire. Conditions continue to worsen for the majority, which will inevitably lead to graver and more acute crises as demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Empire offers no answers, just platitudes and lies. Social transformation rests upon the ability of the oppressed to look beyond the narratives of their oppressor, seek truth from facts, and build a mass movement that can sustain radical and revolutionary debate and organization.
Of course, the word “critical” comes from a bedrock of critical thinking, looking beyond the looking glass, tossing all those the rose tinted shit Capitalism glasses to the crusher, and stopping the feeding tube filled with lies and historical fictions into our babies on through the K12 system. The amount of stupidity coming from many K12 teachers and administrators and curriculum dictators is reflected in the amount of deficits in thinking and knowledge and compassion and ethics and vital questioning of authority many of these 18 year old’s are plagued with once they graduate (sic). Yep, you are what you do not know, what you do not think, what you do not speak, what you do not hope for, what you are not exposed to, what you do not eat, drink, breathe, consumer, buy, do, believe, hope for, imagine, create, grow, what you do not read or discuss or debate.
Here it is, black and white, what you do or do not ask, what you do or do not investigate, what you do or do not study scientifically, what you do or do not engage in, that’s the Kurtz horror in our Heart of Darkness. These elite MDs, et al. are Mengele on a very sophisticated level.
When it comes to the Covid-19 vaccine and “fertility,” the official talking points have been dizzyingly contradictory. On the one hand, one regularly encounters passionate and categorical insistence that there is no evidence of any negative impact on fertility, short or long term, attending any Covid-19 vaccine. As of yesterday, the CDC now states, “There is currently no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, cause fertility problems in women or men.”
In theGuardian article from April, Dr. Gunter sneeringly invokes the age-old, disingenuous, sexist, and murderous conflict between male “scientists” and female “witches,” saying, “No, the Covid-19 vaccine is not capable of exerting reproductive control via proxy. Nothing is. This is because it is a vaccine, not a spell.” Brumfiel of NPR asks, “Can vaccines cause infertility, miscarriages? The answer to all this is no.” Concerns to the contrary, he says, are nothing more than “a persistent set of lies.” The New York Times states, “Scientists have said there is no evidence that the vaccines affect fertility or pregnancy.” Dr. Brian Levine, founding partner of a reproductive health clinic, says, “No one has been able to say that there are any untoward outcomes on anyone’s reproductive potential or reproductive future as a result of receiving the Covid-19 vaccine or the sequence of vaccines.”
A widely quoted male gynecologist told the BBC that there was “no evidence to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines will affect fertility.” Alan Copperman, MD, of the Mt. Sinai Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science, claims “the evidence shows that the vaccines will not affect anyone’s fertility.” Just yesterday, from the Boston Globe, we are told there is “conclusive evidence that the vaccine has no negative impacts on reproduction.”
Such statements give the unmistakable impression that the matter of Covid-19 vaccination and fertility is resoundingly decided.
But, here’s what is confusing. The menstrual cycle – and please, someone do correct me if I’m wrong – is a fertility cycle, consisting of a follicular phase, the ovulation phase, the luteal phase, and then the passing of the menses itself. If a woman accepts a Covid-19 vaccine and begins to suddenly and hemorrhagically bleed, for weeks or months or end, this by no means necessarily suggests she is permanently sterilized, but nevertheless indicates her cycle has been thrown off track, which is a fertility-related side effect – one which is particularly salient to a woman trying to conceive.
Indeed, when one reads the medical literature and official corporate and government statements with the uncharitable eye of a lawyer (which I am), the medical establishment’s position on Covid-19 vaccination and fertility is strikingly more circumspect than that which appears in the press.
It turns out that the lack of “scientific evidence” that Covid-19 vaccines affect fertility has at least something to do with the lack of actual scientific research on the question.
Again, Capitalism runs on chaos, confusion, patriotisms, false gods, scientism, divide and conquer technique, and much much more, but also relies on the head in the sand proposition; on overload, general anxiety disorder on steroids; and through the super-charged world of Social (sic) Media. To the point of most humanity in these United States of America having no conversations about masks, the mRNA, vaccinations forced while you are held down by the thugs of capitalism: banks, mortgage holders, landlords, employers, the cops/pigs, authorities, state, local and county boards. Mandates are marching orders. Mandates are, well, this: “If you don’t see, hear or speak the evil, then, we are dead, the living dead, when the evil is in the corporations, in the courtrooms, in the cop shops, in the various branches of government, in the military, in the Social Network brain zapping, mind stripping systems of oppression.”
There are evil forces out there, Mister Ostrich, and I ain’t talking lions and leopards. The evil is the banality of it, the Eichmanns, the folks wearing lab coats, the uniformed military, civilians and such in DARPA who are just regular people working on the next and the next evil virus that can’t be taken down by normal methods.
Now this is evil suppression of a theraputic — SaNoTize, it should have been approved March 2020! Imagine that, nasal spray, to cut down on viral load. Guaranteed to work better than social distancing, masks and endless antimicrobial spays and foams that are not creating AMR — antimicrobial resistance on steroids.
The self-administered nitric oxide spray, developed by Vancouver biotech firm SaNOtize, is said to have yielded promising results in its UK and Canada clinical trials, including against the UK variant. The company is preparing submissions to worldwide regulators for emergency approval.
“We are currently working to find the right partner in India and hoping it will be approved as a medical device in India to prevent Covid-19,” said CEO and co-founder of SaNOtize Dr Gilly Regev.”What I would have loved right now is to go and give this to a whole town in India and show that everyone using it is not getting infected,” she said. “We would have saved millions of lives if we could have brought it to market last year.”
Again, you are what you are not allowed to see, not allowed to read, not allowed to hear, not allowed to watch, not allowed to speak:
Meanwhile, Merck Co. – which manufactured the drug in the 1980s, has come out big against the use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19. In February, the company’s website read: “Company scientists continue to carefully examine the findings of all available and emerging studies of Ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 for evidence of efficacy and safety. It is important to note that, to date, our analysis has identified no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies; no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and a concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.”
As the Post points out – Merck has not launched a single study of its own on ivermectin.
“You would think Merck would be happy to hear that ivermectin might be helpful to corona patients and try to study it, but they are most loudly declaring the drug should not be used,” said Schwartz.
“A billion people took it. They gave it to them. It’s a real shame.”
In closing, the research team writes that “Developing new medications can take years; therefore, identifying existing drugs that can be re-purposed against COVID-19 [and] that already have an established safety profile through decades of use could play a critical role in suppressing or even ending the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.”
“Using re-purposed medications may be especially important because it could take months, possibly years, for much of the world’s population to get vaccinated, particularly among low- to middle-income populations.“
‘Oh say can you say, by the dawn’s early propaganda/censoring/book-internet burning’: You can’t view this on YouTube or Facebook. Now that’s a crime against humanity.
Note: This is from the Newport News Times Friday 1/27. I’ll leave it as a stand alone. There will be a note at the end.
My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see.
— Joseph Conrad, The Task of the Artist
I’ve been a wordsmith since my late teens: sports reporting intern in Tucson for the evening daily newspaper.
My first magazine gig was with Skin Diver magazine, and that was an interesting journey into 25 cents per word, but $50 for each photo. I was diving in Baja; I waited out a hurricane that wiped out a small village where I had spent time before and after the storm. Two shots of mountains of hammerhead jaws drying in the sun and sharks underwater; two photos of the village (before and after); shots of some of the villagers digging out; and a photo of me hanging onto a humpback whale landed me more cashola than the 1,000-word article.
I ended up in Bisbee, Tombstone, Nogales, Cochise’s Stronghold and all along the U.S.-Mexico border (La Frontera) as a reporter filing stories on all manner of cool, odd, and sometimes boring stories around planning and zoning, city council and school board meetings.
Words, accuracy, research and inventiveness were everything to me, even before the newspaper gigs in Southern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere. The Daily Wildcat was my home at the University of Arizona. Words and deploying more than just an inverted news triangle were powerful, and accuracy was a must since everyone on and off campus was reading my work.
I took this gig seriously enough to end up at the University of Texas teaching college composition while finishing a master’s degree. My entire career around words has been anchored to the power of the word to not only transform a community, but oneself.
This isn’t an arcane belief. To be, say a marine biology student (I was one of those), doing some deep reef work AND then writing a report on the findings, but also on the reason for the experiment in the first place, that is the power of the word. We had to write about the cultural history, too — the people and the sea.
Literacy is somewhat new in the USA, that is, reading and writing. Unfortunately, functional illiteracy is high. I ended up teaching U.S. military members at Fort Bliss a week-long writing class with the goal of getting some of the less literate students to at least a seventh grade reading level.
Nationwide, on average, 79 percent of U.S. adults were literate in 2022. Conversely, 21 percent of adults in the U.S. are illiterate. However, more telling, 54 percent of adults have literacy below sixth grade level. Worse still is that up to 80 percent of Americans in all demographic categories can’t follow eighth grade instructions on correctly installing a child car seat.
As a college instructor, I taught Jonathan Kozol’s work, including his book, Illiterate America. One of the passages is telling about the foundation of America: “One hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms: ‘I thank God,’ he said, that ‘there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them … God save us from both!’”
After decades teaching/mentoring students in the art of writing — composition, business writing, technical writing, fiction, poetry, news writing — I have arrived at a new baseline of absurdity and danger:
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a program that generates sophisticated text in response to any prompt a person can imagine. This artificial intelligent application signals the end of writing assignments altogether.
Again, writing is a way of gauging skills and understanding the fine art of whichever field one may end up in. If a student or specialist can explain the process of ocean acidification for both post-doctoral students and laypersons, then the author is ahead of the game. Literacy is key for cultures to both thrive and move ahead.
A deeply researched book on China, say Jeff J. Brown’s 44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013), is worth more than 44 days of watching mainstream news reporting on China.
Additionally, some of the best writing comes from scientists like Peter Ward, Under a Green Sky, or a seasoned journalist like Elizabeth Kolbert, who wrote The Sixth Extinction.
There is this belief in elite circles humanity in the future will be split into two major camps — those with power, money and connections, and then the rest of us, who will be dubbed as useless workers-eaters-humans. Yuval Noah Harari believes AI and robotics will render workers in the main unnecessary, useless. This is the philosophy of the World Economic Forum, Aspen Institute and others throughout industry and government.
We are now reading machine-generated (AI) “news” stories. We are in a great reset where data of every sort is collected and then sold to the digital gods who feed that information into computers to learn what it is to be, think, dream, hope, do as humans. And how to write!
We can feed ChatGPT software a writing prompt close to my heart — What does Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” mean to a young person in the 21st century? The program will produce a competent essay, even replicating the student’s level of articulation.
This is Cliff Notes and plagiarism on steroids. It is a slippery slope, one of a thousand deaths by ten million digital cuts. Nothing good comes from this smoke and mirrors and scamming technology. Having every nanosecond of our lives monitored, every survey we answer and bit of data we send out captured by big business will move us closer to that critical point of big brother everywhere pulling us farther away from what it is to be a thinker, doer, debater, creator and writer.
First Note: The Medford Mail Tribune has closed its door after 113 years in business. I will be writing about the death of newspapers and concomitant death of critical thinking/debate in America in another column.
Second Note: I did not know this piece was running today, “The Power of the Written Word.” I am not in the newsroom, as I am just the guy who pens these longish (for a small newspaper) columns discussing the issues of the day and the things on my mind. Again, I have many hats as a writer, and much on DV that is original to DV is all rant, polemics, humor, and flipping the scripts (more on that in another piece).
But the front page news for this rag is terrible:
News-Times publication change in two weeks
Newspaper moves to once-weekly print edition
The News-Times last week announced a significant change to its publication schedule starting next month. For those readers who may have missed it, the newspaper will be consolidated into one edition per week. The first paper printed after this change will be on Feb. 10, which means there will be no Wednesday paper that week, on Feb. 8.
The News-Times was forced to make this change due to the significant challenges it faced during the past few years, such as staff shortages and large increases in production costs. And like newspapers across the country, the News-Times has seen a decline in advertising revenue.
I was talking to my spouse about how I have seen the values I have held since age 16, 1973, which were fertilized and fed and shaped into adult values, those major ones — I’m think major ones, way beyond dozens — have been eroding quickly.
Newspapers — the old time religion of competition in cities, i.e. two huge daily newspapers, morning and evening, and then weeklies, and then monthlies, and then specialized newsletters, etc., that was the way to bring people together and to get under the skin of the overlords. It is not the same on-line, in the digital world, as we see, confirmation bias and manicuring one’s biases and blind spots is the way of Facebook, Google Searches, and the on-line trash of the digital click baits, aggregators and on and on.
Curating what you know, what you debate, what you expose yourself to, that in my mind is the death of those values, one being news, and robust debate.
Education was another one of those values — real education, as in experiential, and mixed with community based learning, outside the classroom. Real robust and overarching education taking the front and center of our lives, not the crap of retail and consumer and celebrity cult shit.
Biological and environmental and ecological sciences. Whew, what a dying breed of people in this camp, as schools/department are all contingent on playing nice in the grant and funding sandbox.
Literature and creative writing? Oh, how the publishing world has been bastardized, held hostage to the top 6 monopoly publishers, and then the Masters of Fine Arts writing school journals.
I will not go on with the other values I hold dear, those tied to or around certain avocations, fields of interest/study, and academic and professional experience that all have been eroded to the point of very few people left in my tribe. Forget about all the social justice and civic minded issues I hold dear enough to become part of my values system.
There are few tribes left for me to confab with. The death of journalism, even small-town journalism, is not a very good thing. More on this in another 1,000 word column, now, in a once-a-week newspaper!
You didn’t need to hear it from me that the USA is subjected to some of the most insane and inhumane policies tied to the criminal injustice system; tied to mass public K12 education; and corporate overlording; or anti-union activities; also to taxation; or finance; and health care; tied to infrastructure care; or tied to retirement protection. I’ve written about social work and social services many times, and the terrible outcomes of those I have served: just released from prison; pregnant teenagers; foster youth, 16 to 21 years old; veterans and their families deemed homeless and medically fragile; folks with substance abuse issues as well as living homeless; gang-influenced youth; inmates in a federal correctional institution; community college students; active duty military; lifelong learning senior citizens; adults with intellectual, developmental and psychological disabilities.1
Enough, already. Plenty more where those stories came from!
Moving on: Here, the latest mainstream media-press account, again, a day late, a few hundred million dollars short: Oregon is facing a drastic shortage of mental health care workers. The state needs as many as 35,000 new workers by some estimates to fill the mental health care needs in the state. But people interested and willing to go into the field are facing high barriers to doing the work. What can be done to change the system, and open up the pipeline of behavioral health care workers?
It’s way beyond the crappy pay, the student loans, the overloads, the lack of respect, poor management, lack of trauma informed managers, and so much more. The value in this society is big time sports, big time corporate jobs, big time doctors and CEOs and administrators and, well, you get the picture: if I am paid $17 an hour to be a case manager, and then a toilet and bedroom cleaner with an Air B & B gets $21 an hour, and if a bus driver for schools gets $19 an hour, and if some of us volunteer and get diddly squat from tax write offs for all that work, and, you get the idea: money for nothing, and the Value of Nothing.
Until we have 250 elementary students to one counselor, when we have rotating visiting nurses, when we have K12 teachers swamped with the stupidity of curriculum and the stupidity of the local community hobbling teaching; when we have the hands on stuff cut — auto mechanics, construction, floral arranging, orthotics, pet techs, even beauty classes, all of that, including leather working, ceramics, graphic arts, film making, radio broadcasting, gardening, husbandry, basket weaving, well, we are in this mess of digital gulags and the deadening of the Homo sapiens into Homo erectus algorith consumo retailopethicus.
I’ve seen the blasphemy daily, as foster and group homes are going by the wayside for troubled youth and youth and adults living with DD-ID-PD. We have care homes going by the wayside, and we have retirement and terminal medical care facilities costing someone $6,000 a month for one room and pretty basic food. More and more people are paid this $15 an hour shit wage for a vital job, and additionally, they have to drive drive drive to work, and then, put in incredible stressful hours up to sometimes 10 or 12 hour work days. With some of the most despicable bosses around. Pressure pressure pressure. Forget about the fact that non-profits are for-profits, and those retirement-care facilities are monopolized by a few dozen across the land. Speaking of bullshit jobs:
We are at that crossroads of wondering just how far the human brain and spirit can take now, 2023, with the cascading of big-time issues penetrating the souls of people, stripping us bare, stripping our immune systems, and culling our brains. Good people. Vulnerable people. We are trapped in a world of complexities and counter-intuitive thinking and rationalizations, but those complexities are nothing compared to C-PTSD: complex post traumatic stress disorder. More than just a label. The foisting of so much media madness, too, on top of our personal hells, and then add to that, the reality of capitalism as a “search and destroy the competition/ mom and pop/ bricks and mortar/ people-centered businesses” sort of law of the “jungle,” Lord of the Flies style.
We have trauma deeply repressed, unprocessed, hidden, sort of hanging there, in the psyche, and alas, a trigger will pull the anxiety into the bloodstream until a whole lot of mental and shaking comes along.
It is not just a dog eat dog adventure into chaos, and more than bizarre allusion of the law of the jungle crap. Capitalism is scorched earth devaluation of humans policies. The economies of scale is for the shareholders and top brass, not for some nirvana of great benefit to the rank and file. There is so much ugliness and cut-throat shit that the world today serves up, on top of atomized families, communities, friendships; on top of the sink or swim nature of things in AmeriKa. Imagine, facing all of that PLUS the traumatic disorders.
Trauma is a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically that then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. It pains you and now you’re acting out of pain. It induces fear and now you’re acting out of fear. Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.
— Gabor Mate, Oct 14, 2019
Inside, hidden, pushed down, recriminated, hated, laughed at, and as the Anglo Saxon credo says, “Keepa stiff upper lip, bloke.” It’s bad enough that the systems — education, politics, local governance, media, Press, family, government business, bureaucracies — are against the 80 Percent: those that do not have political, real estate, employment, financial, familial, networking clout. But the so-called representatives we “vote” in and who are picked by those we vote in are working for THEM, the point zero-zero-zero One Percent; the One Percent; the Five Percent and possibly the rest of the 15 percent. Representation and clout and power for the 20 percent, more or less. Of course, there is the Faustian Bargain for the 15 Percenters. There is the Eichmann Syndrome. There is the lock-step belief in the hope that providing support for the elite and their legions of manipulators will get you away from decay: neighborhood, school system, environmental, familial, fraternal, transactional decay.
The world’s 85 richest individuals possess as much wealth as the 3.5 billion souls who compose the poorer half of the world’s population, or so it was announced in a report by Oxfam International. The assertion sounds implausible to me. I think the 85 richest individuals, who together are worth many hundreds of billions of dollars, must have far more wealth than the poorest half of our global population.
How could these two cohorts, the 85 richest and 3.5 billion poorest, have the same amount of wealth? The great majority of the 3.5 billion have no net wealth at all. Hundreds of millions of them have jobs that hardly pay enough to feed their families. Millions of them rely on supplements from private charity and public assistance when they can. Hundreds of millions are undernourished, suffer food insecurity, or go hungry each month, including many among the very poorest in the United States.
— Michael Parenti)
A decaying society pays off (benefits handsomely) for the 19 or 20 Percent. And the cognitive dissonance and the collective Stockholm Syndrome mixed witht he GAD — general anxiety disorder — weathers the shit out of us, the 80 Percent. Until we have a shortage of mental health/social services heroes (oh, shortages left and right, and everywhere one cares to look). We need navigators for almost everything in this legalistic, contractualized, atomized, disassociative society, since everything in the pipeline we need to survive, i.e. safety nets, is almost impossible to interpret and understand. People need help with bills, debts, loans, health care, insurance, housing, medical needs, and mental health. The house we live in may have some fancy furniture and amazing kitchen and bathroom redos, but if the roof leaks (and it’s leaking like a sieve), then the entire half a million dollar home is a goner, sooner than later. Flooded, soaked, warped, moldy and a tear down soon.
Think of the mental health of a child as the roof for that child’s psychic and humanistic house, world, well being. Think of the totality of those in and around that child suffering from the leaky roof. Think of the collective community in and around the youth with the leaky mental health roof gushing water onto them. No amount of Advance Placement classes and super duper athletic training will help build a child into a teen and then into an adult with some normalcy and balance and internal strength without the leaky roof being fixed, maybe R & R-ed, but absolutely not full of holes.
Lifeblood and gut-brain connections are connected to the holism of grand positive mental and spiritual health. The gut-brain-hormone-immune system is all predicated on sound mental health, and learning what trauma is, then stopping it, preventing it, and, of course, patching it up, i.e. treating it. Therapies are the construction processes for that leaky psychic roof.
And so, depression, general anxiety disorder, the new ailments of social media and Facebook shaming, and the disassociative links to all that time on tablets and surfing the internet, and hooking into a Zoom Doom room for every class, every human (sic) interaction. Think of the shame of people in the USA for being so, well, collectively stupid, impotent, flagging, when it comes to the reality that celebrities, the rich, the famous, the leadership, the administrations, the governors’ offices, the entire shit show is worthy of complete deconstruction and dismantling or imploding, yet, we are still in this continuum of never pushing the edge of the envelope and standing down those systems of exploitation, abuse, scamming and general anxiety setting progroms.
This is normal, but today, a diatribe like this would get you Tazed, hog-tied, thrown in jail, and put into a mental ward:
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy.
It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.
All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’
So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’
I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell –
‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’
Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis.
But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
It’s normal, that reaction, no, and we should embrace the roots of any sort of explosion of emotion that fits this “Anger moment.” But beware: I have been a social services practitioner, and the people in it and at the managerial level are not the right folk for the job in so many cases. And, while I always connect these diatribes to my own journey, AKA struggle, this is more than about the stupidity of people in my neck of the woods — Lincoln County — who have passed me over on more than a dozen or so attempts to get employed here in this rural county as a social services practitioner. That is the way of the middling, the milquetoast, and I have to say the attitude of ignorant and destructive human beings in social services. There is no way in hell it seems that any of these middle brow folk can see me as a co-worker at the county, state or city or nonprofit level to be a case manager or social services navigator.
Here we are, then, stuck in the dead pan of AmeriKa, where conformity is the way of the sheeple, the lemming. Following the crowd or buying into the good old broken system, this is the way of the Yanqui. Oh, they say over and over — “You can’t fight City Hall. I’m just one person. They are too powerful and we are too weak.” AmeriKans have caved!
Until, well, sorry to say, the 80 Percent are begging for life support. Begging for basics. In this upside down world of an earth moving closer and closer to nuclear hell, all because of a few elites, a few money changers in Jesus Christ’s story, people are hobbled and strangled by the oppressiveness of elites running the show and ruling the roost. Money changers a la War Mongers, a la Big Pharma, a la Larry Fink and Blackrock, so many tens of thousands of top dog criminals. Can you imagine those Pseudos buying that old time religion story, Matthew 21:12!?
The crowds replied, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” Then Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’
Imagine that sanity, daily: distrupting the disruptors? Well, try this out for size: This is 2022 IRS 1040 filing time, but maybe also a time for 100 million USA households to declare Zelensky and his sidekick wife as OUR dependents, our WRITE-OFFS, our DEDUCTIONS. That’s $2,000 each, at $4,000 total, and with 100,000,000 filing that way, as the dirty Ukrainian couple as our “children,” hell, we’ll get back some of the drug-gun-offshore money of the Ukrainian Nazis the USA Criminal Enterprise has stolen from our taxpayer coffers to throw at Zelensky’s war — count that $400,000,000,000 total for 100 million 1040s filed with the ugly couple as our dual deduction of $4,000. That’s four hundred billion $$.
In our pockets. And then, hmm, how about massive rolling strikes. IN concert with Mutal Aid. Can you imagine all the people suffering mental illness, all the hardships of children in today’s day and age, and especially now, when there are still putrid sorts yelling at the youth that they have it easy. “Try growing up in the Great Depression. Or during World War Two.” We have to take things back or all hell will break loose. Mental Hell, that is.
Here’s one version of trauma —
And, another version:
‘Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice’ by Raj Patel and Rupa Marya takes the reader on a medical tour of the human body and reveals the relationship between our biology and the injustices of our political and economic system such as racism, poverty and colonialism. Patel and Marya ultimately offer a cure of “deep medicine” to heal our bodies and the world by reconnecting to the earth and each other.
We come down to this, uh? Canada, USA, Africa, South America, Mexico, anywhere we find the clergy! I have a friend in Australia, part of the victim class of native Australians who were despoiled and abused by clergy, in this case the robed and frocked monsters of the Catholic Church. This is one trauma piled onto another, until a victim is powerful but still at age 60, say, waylaid by the news of yet another blasphemy of humanity getting prime time news coverage recently: Do these people have no dignity, no access to a bottle of barbituates and fifth of vodka? More lies, convicted but found not-guilty? Blasphemy. There are Nine Circles of Hell. Welcome to one of them, Cardinal, where there will undoubtedly be a few hundreds of millions of others awaiting you there.
Cardinal George Pell, 81, died in Rome on Jan. 10, the Vatican has confirmed. A leading Australian Catholic and close advisor to Pope Francis, the cardinal had participated in the funeral of his friend, Pope Benedict XVI, just last week.
Pell, the former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, became the third-highest ranked official in the Vatican after Pope Francis tapped him in 2014 to reform the Vatican’s notoriously opaque finances as the Holy See’s first-ever finance czar. He spent three years as prefect of the newly created Secretariat for the Economy, where he tried to impose international budgeting, accounting and transparency standards.
He has been living in Rome since his release from an Australian maximum security prison in 2020 after spending 404 days in solitary confinement after being wrongfully convicted in December 2018 on charges of the abuse of two altar boys in Melbourne in 1996.
His conviction was upheld by an appeals court in March 2019, but he always protested his innocence and was the first cardinal to be imprisoned on such charges. The full bench of Australia’s High Court unanimously squashed his conviction in 2020, and he decided to return to Rome, where he had previously served in various positions under Pope Francis. (Source)
There are thousands of priests who have never been excommunicated or jailed for their rape crimes. I recall when I was in El Paso, and there were some priests from Spokane Diocese in El Paso. I never inquired there, but until later. Then, just by chance, I ended up in Spokane years later, and ahh, there was the answer to El Paso and Spokane priest connection: the ones charged up in Washington, in Spokane, got sent to the border, where the “little brown ones and the brown people would just be happy to have some wise, white priest from the sophisticated Northwest tending the flock.” That’s what one Jesuit said to me, quoting one of his bosses. Send away the rapists to the other outposts, in this case, La Frontera, the border.
There are so many multiple trauma’s just in the ether, such as the head Federal Reserve Mafiosa — how does his continence settle with you?
Ahh, the fed chief, or this cabal? Vice President Joe Biden, flanked by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, sits with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on February 7, 2015, before a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany.
Yep, that’s $17 or $20 an hour with clients suffering under a massive overload of trauma, both physical and mental. Those leaky roofs, the spiritual and psychological shelters and protective covers that need attending to before almost anything else, they are gaping, and yet ‘this country tis of thee’ throws trillions away, burns it up, memory holes it, until we have all of us on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Again, I am a communist, so these two blokes below are not my normal everyday peeps I’d be hanging with, but I am certainly around so many people who are bought, sold and delivered in this exceptionalist wasteland, that I learn how to converse and have open dialogue and debates. But listen to Scott Ritter here. Have you ever seen this guy on Amy Soros Goodman’s Democracidocy Now? On any of the mainstream media? But listen to him, man. This is serious stuff, and he tells it like it is that Blinken should be immediately sacked, and that there is no one sane person in the Biden Administration, and that there are no nuclear arms control panels.
And we wonder why so so many people are on the verge of a complete melt down:
The trail of tears throughout the old colonies and the neo-colonies is epigenic trauma of the generations. The collateral damage. The Madeleine Albright murders by 1,000 economic sanctions cuts, it never just ends with her or that generation or time frame. Over 500,000 dead was-is-will forever be worth it in her psychopath’s mind. How many generations are lost and affected?
Fight until the last Ukrainian. Worth it! Yeah, death by 10,000 cuts.
•U.S. EPA fish testing in 2013–2015 had a median PFAS concentration of 11,800 ng/kg.
•Even infrequent freshwater fish consumption can increase serum PFOS levels.
•One fish serving can be equivalent to drinking water for a month at 48 ppt PFOS.
•Fish consumption advice regarding PFAS is inconsistent or absent in the U.S. states.
This is just one insult to humanity, one multiple aspects of how rotten the world is, and so, how are those children supposed to process this? Forever chemicals, all those hormone-disrupting, diabetes-creating, immune system-depleting, cancer-causing, brain fog-inducing shit chemicals/poisons/toxins that the great CEOs and the “follow the science Über Alles” or else bullshit people have put upon humanity and ecosystems?
And how do we get powerful, self-actualized, community-driven, socialist-minded, anti-authority youth activated when they have mental health disturbances via a thousand injustices?
Remember it seems so long ago, 1988? That other criminal, Ronald Reagan, and the 1988 campaign for POTUS, surely a position only megalomaniacs, narcissists and sociopaths can find themselves happy in their own element?
Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis knows about the damage that disability can cause–even its mere mention. In this keynote address given to the symposium on Presidential Disability and Succession held at Northeastern University in Boston last spring (2014), Dukakis reflected on his famous 1988 presidential campaign that, largely at his expense, redefined negativity in presidential politics, in particular the fictitious allegation that he had a history of mental illness. A distinguished professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Northeastern University, Dukakis also spends each winter quarter at UCLA as a visiting professor in the Luskin School of Public Affairs. He remains active in both politics and public policy, canvassing for Democratic candidates such as Elizabeth Warren during her 2012 Senate campaign and promoting policy initiatives through the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern, which he affectionately calls a “think and do tank.” The three-term governor (1975-1979 and 1983-1991) was voted Most Effective Governor by the National Governor’s Association in 1986. After his first term in the late 1970s he lost a nasty primary election to Ed King, whom he would later defeat to reclaim office. Though it wasn’t apparent at the time, for Dukakis, that 1978 campaign would serve as a precursor for the attack politics that were unloosed during the 1988 presidential campaign. In the remarks that follow, he offers a candid assessment of how not going negative may have cost him the presidency, and how an offhand remark by President Reagan (quickly retracted) caused the press to obsess over Dukakis’ health record for the better part of a week–enough to slow his momentum during a crucial stage of campaigning. (Campaigns and disability: When an incumbent president questions his potential successor’s mental health status during the campaign)
I can’t even produce a metaphor for the drug world anymore. I don’t even like the phrase the drug world since the phrase implies a different world.”
― Charles Bowden, Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family
You don’t need a thousand hours studying what trauma is, what forms it might take, delving into wars and conflicts, from the great war, when the psychologists in Europe attempted to study (sic; sick) shell shocked veterans, and, of course, how many civilians are there in that process of witnessing the most horrific treatment of humans and animals at the hands of, well, the soldiers, sure, and the definition of soldier is:
1. a person who serves in an army; a person engaged in military service.
2. an enlisted person, as distinguished from a commissioned officer: the soldiers’ mess and the officers’ mess.
a person of military skill or experience: George Washington was a great soldier.
verb (used without object): to act or serve as a soldier.
Informal. to loaf while pretending to work; malinger:
3. a wingless caste of ant or termite with a large specially modified head and jaws, involved chiefly in defense.
Soldiers? Mindless individuals? Bizarrely propagandized patriotic fools? Blood lust wannabes? Mercenaries in the employ of dirty, grotesque nations? Those who would rather wrap themselves in flags, swastikas, Ukrainian blue and yellow ribbons, and then, shoot to kill, shoot anything that moves, Murder All Military Aged Men? But they are being pushed around territories and lands by the War is a Racket Money Kings and Queens (do you want to see if your school, business, your own measely money investments are into one of these Top 100 War Profiteers? How about My Lai?
Hit men, one and all, whether from one of the Military Academies, or just from the dungeons of mercenary hell; hired on, persuaded by incompetents — generals and chiefs of staff and politicians and heads of the war profiteers and the civil servants in the revolving door scam. Teary eyed songs on Veterans Day/Armistice Day. Pathetic selling war, more war, and ZERO negotiations — many of them do not care about civilians, fighters, museums, churches, land, et al. Truly ruthless, in that they dehumanize their own babies, daughters, wheelchair-bound grandfathers, their own pets, all of it, it is open season. Sure, not THEIRS directly, but those children, babies, sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, old and young, moms and pops on the OTHER side. Oh, that’s right, only kill those deemed the enemy? Nakba anyone?
Barbaric, brutal, and, if they went into uniformed, armed “service” with any humanity in their bones, any guts that states war is evil, well, well, well, they come out natural-born killers, warped, broken, disassociated from people, angry, psychotic, psychologically wounded, and, then, that shell shock we talked about early in the days of nascent psychology. Do not judge too harshly those youth that get caught up in gangs, who have nothing of a family unit, who have nothing to live for but guns, macho, abuse, drug running, following a leader, and murder. Which Faustian Gamble is the Best Faustian Bargain?
Beware, though, as you watch Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro in Sicario I, II, or III, because that macho shit — and it includes brutality, murdering, execution, rape, pedophilia, torturing, soldiering on, i.e., looking up to a male or male-like leader — might make the viewer forget the ones in suits and with briefcases and Harvard MBA’s and JD’s and political positions that they are the killers. Desensitized? Habituated? Normalized? Shows with action and no discussion board? Yeah, that’s Entertainment. I’ve met Perkins, and he too is not anything more than a hit man in mea culpa profit-making land mode. Can you really fix the sins of your own life, and the sins of your father? This fellow, again, gets on Democracy Now and into Green Festivals, vaunted as some hero (NOT).
You know, so many of us did not sign up to be murderers, never joined the economic draft, never bought into fraternities and macho Friday Night Football horror; or lusted after CIA, Criminal Injustice Outfits. Many of us never sought to work for any of those alphabet agencies of despair/disgust/ disasters/death: DoD, FBI, ATF, CIA, NSA, HHS, and on and on, including DOJ. The Faustian Bargain has been signed, sealed and delivered daily by the tens of thousands for those people who want to gain, abuse, get one over on “them,” and who want to be part of the disaster capitalism shock troops of whichever form of abuse and trauma deliver one might find herself or himself in.
Oh Faustus!
Sure, Chuck Bowden was amazing, died semi-young (in his sixty-ninth year) and was a true hero of the journalistic kind.
I live in a time of fear and the fear is not of war or weather or death or poverty or terror. The fear is of life itself. The fear is of tomorrow, a time when things do not get better but become worse. This is the belief of my time. I do not share it. The numbers of people will rise, the pain of migration will grow, the seas will bark forth storms, the bombs will explode in the markets, and mouths fighting for a place at the table will grow, as will the shouting and shoving. That is a given. Once the given is accepted, fear is pointless. The fear comes from not accepting it, from turning aside one’s head, from dreaming in the fort of one’s home that such things cannot be. The fear comes from turning inward and seeking personal salvation. The bones must be properly buried, amends must be made. Also, the beasts must be acknowledged. And the weather faced, the winds and rains lashing the face, still, they must be faced. So too, the dry ground screaming for relief. There is an industry peddling solutions, and these solutions insist no one must really change, except perhaps a little, and without pain. This is the source of the fear, this refusal to accept the future that is already here. In the Old Testament, the laws insist we must not drink blood, that the flesh must be properly drained or we will be outcasts from the Lord. They say these rules were necessary for clean living in some earlier time. I swallow the blood, all the bloods. I am that outlaw, the one crossing borders. The earlier time is over.
I’ve been to a couple of Bowden’s talks, and spoke with him in El Paso a very long time ago, it seems, when I was a journalist and teacher and, well, we will not get into THAT other thing. He’s not my guru, but he held some gravitas for me in the world of writing and journalism and speaking out against the crimes of the many set upon us all by the criminals in high office, the lobbies, the corporate boards, even the local and state agencies populated by big and small Eichmann’s, you know, little Eichmann’s. The drug gangs, lords, thugs, and politicians in Mexico are facilitated by, well, you guessed it, Military!
Let’s look at maltreatment of our children. Here and everywhere. Yes, the dirty dealings we set out for our own children and the collective children.
So, the pop-psychology headline, “Childhood Maltreatment Linked With Multiple Mental Health Problems” Jan. 10, 2023 just illustrates how slow witted, how dum downed and how flippant the entire show is, and when I mean show, I mean mainstream and internet feeds/news/games/ propaganda/marketing/ PR/advertising/yellow journalism.
The findings suggest that preventing eight cases of child maltreatment would prevent one person from developing mental health problems.
Corresponding author, Dr Jessie Baldwin (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences), said:
“It is well known that child maltreatment is associated with mental health problems, but it was unclear whether this relationship is causal, or is better explained by other risk factors.
“This study provides rigorous evidence to suggest that childhood maltreatment has small causal effects on mental health problems. Although small, these effects of maltreatment could have far-reaching consequences, given that mental health problems predict a range of poor outcomes, such as unemployment, physical health problems and early mortality.
“Interventions that prevent maltreatment are therefore not only essential for child welfare, but could also prevent long-term suffering and financial costs due to mental illness.”
Think hard Americanos, pro-Capitalists, pro-war drumming fools the absolute trauma of any conflict, that is, armed including those of the suited economic hit men as well as those tatooed hitmen children of the Pablo Escobar-El Chapo variety. Think of the Holly-Dirt images and storylines that show those folk, and it is Mario Puzo on steroids, because there is true admiration of the Mafia and the Sin City Juarez sicarios. Really, when it comes to Holly-Dirt. What about guys like Cormac McCarthy and his “No Country for Old Men” novel-turned-into-hit-movie?
What is trauma, then, those childhood maltreatments? Researchers define childhood maltreatment as any physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect before the age of 18. Imagine the life and times of a Palestinian, or a Yemeni? Imagine the life and times of those children in Donbass after the Chosen People’s Maiden coup under the auspices of the religious zealots of the Zionist variety — Nuland, Kagan, Blinken, et al?
Imagine what maltreatment is when in that Juarez neighborhood where familes are broke by booze, bounty, poverty, machoism, the unholy trinity of materialism, war, and greed? Think about how difficult it is to be a hero in your own family, neighborhood, school, job, state, country.
Thnks of all that trauma the USA inflicts on children before age 18. School lunches are not being cut, and school districts across the land are holding the proverbial hundreds of millions of dollars owed bag. Think hard how a Republican cuts the school lunches, and how dysfunctional schools are with a counselor for every 250 or more elementary students. Think of your community and try and find one qualified child psychologist with real work under her belt.
Student meal debt is rising rapidly in many school districts across the country.
The reason: now that federal funding that made school meals free for all students during the pandemic has ended, families are either struggling to pay for school meals or aren’t even aware that the program ended and they are now obligated to pay.
The end of universal free school meals comes as inflation and rising labor costs are driving up food prices for both schools and families.
No anger yet, over this messed up reality while the multimillionaire Nazified War Thug Zelenskyy gets billions and billions from U$A?
Maltreatment! Think of all the news, all the parents’ fears coming home to the child. Think of yelling, cursing, whipping, swatting, all of that, including how little attention and interaction adults have with those developing spirits-bodies-brains. So many adults are checked out, infantilized, Disneyfied and vapid and vacant. Fear and anger, the ugly mix with greed, that pretty much do it.
Think think think how corrupted adults are, and how foolish even people who want to do good are when they spend time worrying or reading about body shaming at the Golden Globes when their own communities lack childcare, day care, domestic abuse care, health care, mental care, activities care.
Who are the monsters? The kiddos surviving the hell on the streets? Dodging the violent adults? Hiding from the murdering cops? Are they kings of their own world?
Kings of the World? How does this film about teenagers in Columbia questing for the land one lad’s grandmother once owned but who had the land taken away? Of course, at the end of the flick, they make it to the land, and find gold miners polluting it, and, then, bam, all the kids get murdered. That is not a spoiler alert, my fine socialist readers, I hope!
Before “The Kings of the World,” the latest feature from Colombian writer-director Laura Mora, inserts us in the bustling streets of Medellín, where teenagers wield machetes to protect themselves, a shot of a fairy-tale-appropriate white horse introduces the dreamlike atmosphere of this ferocious fable about five adolescent street boys denied basic humanity.
Homeless and with no blood family to guard them, the young souls at the forefront of this electrifying social drama fend for themselves in a gritty urban environment. Their only comfort comes from the brotherly affection they display for one another. That state, caught between tenderness and violence as they navigate an inhospitable reality, defines the visceral energy of “The Kings of the World,” Colombia’s most recent Oscar entry.
The leader of the group, 19-year-old Rá (Carlos Andrés Castañeda), has just learned that the land his grandmother was forcefully evicted from many years in the past has finally been returned to him, the sole heir, as part of the government’s land restitution policies. As Rá, Castañeda exudes an air of innocence wrapped in determination. Heroically not bitter despite the harshness he’s faced, his large, expressive eyes illuminate a path forward.
The reality is that these boys are abused, man, and they drink and smoke, and get their asses kicked and beat up and knifed. The reality is they are the street urchins of Dickens or Bowden, the victims of maltreatment after maltreatment. The movie might have that Lord of the Flies undertone, but the reality is we the view should be steaming under the collar looking at how messed up Latin American countries are with the rich and oligarchs and the Americanos messing with the majority of the good people . . . . Until, generations of young men end up anchorless, stuck in the cycle of guns, drugs, knives, duking it out, dog-eat-dog, ugliness of one and then another and then a thousand maltreatments foisted upon them by parents, family, town, state, country, the world.
Think hard now how deeply that shell shocking does, and how wide it is cast, with the elites, the ones in suits and with suites, determining the extent of history and the future. This is this horror machine, this murderer in a suit, telling the world, telling unborn generations, or young generations, what shall be: No more Russia, no more diplomacy. Imagine that maltreatment having an even deeper affect on each new cycle of Harvard bound sad sake, taught by the Georgetown University Chosen People that history is determined by money, murder, war and elites gaming the systems, full stop.
If you do not wake up angry every day, then your are living in your organic (sic) granola world of inhuman existence. I’m not saying to go around with that anger as your operating position, but it should be there, somewhere, when intercoursing with the humanity and systems around you. This picture is worth a thousand words, and I can’t keep barraging the reader with more and more words, since I am not hearing the readers deploying those words to describe these felons for who they are — murderers, perversions of humanity, the maltreatment engines of today’s generation and generations to come (Stoltenberg and Biden):
Yeah, yeah, you gotta be laughing, for sure, at these Anglo Saxons of the highest degenerate order. But you ain’t pissed yet? Come on. See the memorial for children murdered in Donbass from 2014 to 2021?
No? Ahh, shucks, another Slav Chosen Person, Madeline, uh? Remember those cold eyes, those cold hands, wrapped on the money bags, as people, children, THOSE kiddos, are destroyed by more economic hit men and West Point brass?
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.
—60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Or, this absurdity?
“It’s one thing to find out you’re Jewish… but another to find out that relatives had died in concentration camps. That was a stunning shock.”
Madeleine Albright first learned of her Jewish identity when she was 59, two weeks before being sworn in as the first female Secretary of State in U.S. history.
“It was a complicated family story,” she said in an interview.
The lack of curiosity in the monopoly media is far from a lack of thinking: It is a full-fledged attack on people, on history, on truth, on the Fourth Estate’s ability (once) to affect change, to get people motivated to throw the buggers out.
A Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the Albright quote–in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale–a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one’s political ends–does not seem to be one that can be made in U.S. mass media. (Source)
Ahh, read an old piece on how massively corrupt the media are then, when USA military and planners attacked water treatment plants and restricted chlorine for keeping water safe. Read about the effects of sanctions, the very price was worth it on those children. Do you not believe that Albright, like an ocean liner’s worth of others just like her, is not a criminal of the very worst Dante’s Circles of Hell kind?
Yes, maltreatment, in early childhood?
Thomas Nagy of Georgetown University unearthed a Defense Intelligence Agency document entitled “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities,” which was circulated to all major allied commands one day after the Gulf War started. It analyzed the weaknesses of the Iraqi water treatment system, the effects of sanctions on a damaged system and the health effects of untreated water on the Iraqi populace. Mentioning that chlorine is embargoed under the sanctions, it speculates that “Iraq could try convincing the United Nations or individual countries to exempt water treatment supplies from sanctions for humanitarian reasons,” something that the United States disallowed for many years.
Combined with the fact that nearly every large water treatment plant in the country was attacked during the Gulf War, and seven out of eight dams destroyed, this suggests a deliberate targeting of the Iraqi water supply for “postwar leverage,” a concept U.S. government officials admitted was part of military planning in the Gulf War (Washington Post, 6/23/91).
A Dow Jones search for 2000 finds only one mention of this evidence in an American paper–and that in a letter to the editor (Austin American-Statesman, 10/01/00). Subsequent documents unearthed by Nagy (The Progressive, 8/10/01) suggest that the plan to destroy water treatment, then to restrict chlorine and other necessary water treatment supplies, was done with full knowledge of the explosion of water-borne disease that would result. “There are no operational water and sewage treatment plants and the reported incidence of diarrhea is four times above normal levels,” one post-war assessment reported; “further infectious diseases will spread due to inadequate water treatment and poor sanitation,” another predicted.
Combine this with harsh and arbitrary restrictions on medicines, the destruction of Iraq’s vaccine facilities, and the fact that, until this summer, vaccines for common infectious diseases were on the so-called “1051 list” of substances in practice banned from entering Iraq. Deliberately creating the conditions for disease and then withholding the treatment is little different morally from deliberately introducing a disease-causing organism like anthrax, but no major U.S. paper seems to have editorialized against the U.S. engaging in biological warfare–or even run a news article reporting Nagy’s evidence that it had done so. (The Madison Capitol Times–8/14/01–and the Idaho Statesman–10/2/01–ran op-eds that cited Nagy’s work.)
— Source, Nov.1, 2001, “We Think the Price Is Worth It — Media uncurious about Iraq policy’s effects–there or here” by Rahul Mahajan.
Who makes money off of all the pain, the disease, all the epigenetic harm, all the chronic illnesses, all the psychotic breaks, all the PTSD a la Shell Shock? Who makes money or hay from meth or coke addiction? Crime pays, right, for the criminal justice systems of oppression, suppression, plea agreements, revolving door private prison complex.
Read all about it, that Sophisticated, High Brow, Articulate, Shakespeare-Producing Anglo Saxon Murder Incorporated, with the King and Queen and Lords looking over them. Makes those street kids I used to talk with in El Paso and Juarez, you know, spooks or huffers, using glue and even gasoline to get high:
Caroline Elkins’ accounts of British soldiers ramming broken bottles into the vaginas of female Kenyan prisoners during the Kikuyus’ Mau Mau revolt is not, by any stretch, the worst example of Albion’s imperial violence she recounts. Because this 870 page book is awash with similar instances of systematic war crimes by the British administration in Kenya, in Nigeria, Jamaica, South Africa, Malaya, Palestine, Cyprus, Nyasaland, India and countless other outposts of empire, justifiable comparisons between the British and the Nazis arise time and again.
And, although many Nazis were brought to book for their crimes, no British were, even though General Sir Frank Kitson, one of the most notorious of these Grade A war criminals, who hopscotched about from one colonial killing field to the next, is still alive and, no doubt, still plotting the murder of others. The book makes it plain that the British had a bunch of such military and civil service troubleshooters, psychopathic thugs like Kitson and Bomber Harris they were prepared to send, almost at a moment’s notice, to any part of their rotten empire where the “natives” had to be duffed up, a euphemism for barbaric tortures derived from Douglas Duff, one of their Satanic number.
Many of these savages, such as Percival and Montgomery, served alongside the Black and Tan terrorist group in Ireland, before moving on to Palestine, India and Malaya where they honed their torture techniques, which resembled those devils use in medieval paintings.
Or do these fellows really scare the shit out of you?
Ahh, there are so many houses of horrors, in the millions, man, that would scare the pants off of any sicario:
Sacred Yet? And I am big on NOT letting a teachable moment pass, a bit of Jewish Zeaotry tied to the origins of the word, “sicario,” which Jewish Holly-Dirt writers and producers and directors might never let the Netflix public see. (Curious, no, why you see no movies, dramas or otherwise, on the Top platforms or from movie studies on the murdering of families and youth and pets by the Jewish Occupiers? )
The Sicarii (Modern Hebrew: סיקריים siqariyim) were a splinter group of the JewishZealots who, in the decades preceding Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 CE, strongly opposed the Roman occupation of Judea and attempted to expel them and their sympathizers from the area. The Sicarii carried sicae, or small daggers, concealed in their cloaks. At public gatherings, they pulled out these daggers to attack Romans and alleged Roman sympathizers alike, blending into the crowd after the deed to escape detection.
It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.
— Martin Luther King, Jr., Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 31 March 1968 . . . . Born in 1929, King’s actual birthday is January 15 (which in 1929 fell on a Tuesday).
You and I, dear reader, if you are of the composition of say Rosa Parks, or Rachel Carson, MLK, Paul Robeson, Angela Davis (or, fill in the social justice champion of your choice), did not sign up for this, or approve of it, or okayed it in our name:
Some researchers who have long studied the technology are deeply troubled that the company, Make Sunsets, appears to have moved forward with launches from a site in Mexico without any public engagement or scientific scrutiny. It’s already attempting to sell “cooling credits” for future balloon flights that could carry larger payloads.
Several researchers MIT Technology Review spoke with condemned the effort to commercialize geoengineering at this early stage. Some potential investors and customers who have reviewed the company’s proposals say that it’s not a serious scientific effort or a credible business but more of an attention grab designed to stir up controversy in the field. (A startup says it’s begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate)
There are so many words and concepts that can be leveled against these people, and there are literally millions of millionaires and billionaires and the legions of BlackRock/Forbes/City of London/JP Morgan Chase/Blackstone economic hitmen and hitwomen on board with pummeling planet earth, planet people, planet biodiversity with their venereal disease of the spirit. Economicus-Sapiens.
Many of my colleagues and I believe that our global civilization is on an economic path that is environmentally unsustainable, one that is leading us toward economic decline and eventual collapse… Our global situation is incredibly challenging today because of the adoption of the western economic model (e.g., materialism, consumerism, and throw-away mentality) throughout much of the developed and developing economies of the world. (Kitty Hawk Apollo 14 lunar captain, Edgar Mitchell — inspired by Robert Hunziker’s Dissident Voice piece, “Astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s “State of the Planet” Message Revisited”)
Robert cites a bunch of UFO activity in 2022: LiveScience article — “US Military Reports ‘several hundred’ UFO Sightings in 2022, Pentagon Officials Claim” — “UFO reports from U.S. military personnel are flooding the government’s new All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The U.S government’s brand-new UFO-tracking office has been open for half a year, but business is already booming.”
We talk about that in a minute.
Imagine, the idea of all of us being connected through quantum mechanics, molecular consciousness, those waves and particles that we in our ignorance call instinct and ESP. You do not have to go onto the Internet too long to find dogs, with cameras and mics in the house, getting excited and sensing master coming home, with these tools tracking their activity when the “masters” are on their way, or about to get on their way, miles from home, at random times, before getting inside the car and putting pedal to the metal.
Do you feel a connection to a tree, a coral reef, a crow, an eagle, a forest? Get real and belief you and I and those places are all masses of energy, molecules, waves, and consciousness, making a stew of humanity, a whole smorgassborg of the universe.
Dr. Mitchell founded Noetics Foundation to investigate consciousness, ongoing for 38 years, eventually coming up with a quantum hologram. “The universe is self-organizing, intelligent, creative, trial and error interactive learning participatory informationally nonlocally interconnected evolving quantum system. . . .
“Energy, we know is the foundation of all matter; information is the foundation of knowing. Both were present at the moment of creation, whether in a big bang, or in a continuous process of creation in galaxies. It is likely that just as energy produced the physical structure that we recognize as waves and particles, in our macro-world, the seeds of consciousness were also present to produce awareness and intentionality.” Ibid, p. 196. (Source: Edgar D. Mitchells’ Consciousness Presentation, University of Advancing Technologies induction into the Leonardo DaVinci Society for The Society of Thinking, 2011; from the Hunziker piece)
Recall, the peace makers. The lovers of humanity and planet. For now, his is the time of the prince of peace — “Jesus Christ is called the Prince of Peace because He restores every broken relationship, provides a well-ordered and balanced life, and offers the assurance of eternal life.”
Was his message going out globally, through galaxies? And, those who received and saw peace as peace, were they enough to stunt the ones who see war as peace?
We are at war with cultures, language, people, planet. War, so we need new connections to peace, more peace makers. NOW.
Think about what the “economy” means: it’s war against nature . . . . the driving force of Civilization after we pummeled our hunter and gatherer lives, after mother culture was fenced off for wheat and meat and forced labor and disharmony.
“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world.”
“The gazelle and the lion are enemies only in the minds of the Takers. The lion that comes across a herd of gazelles doesn’t massacre them, as an enemy would. It kills one, not to satisfy its hatred of gazelles but to satisfy its hunger, and once it has made its kill the gazelles are perfectly content to go on grazing with the lion right in their midst.” (Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael.”)
Ahh, the collective consciousness of humanity, with that belief in our interconnectedness, oh where oh where is that now in this world of planned pandemics, bioweapons from hell, or ferrets a la bat cornonavirus manipulation? All those bioweapons labs in Ukraine, run by the DOD/CIA, and alas, that precautionary principle and do no harm ethos?
In a world of PayDay loans (as in loan sharking) and one where a fine of a $1000 for front yard grass too long, or homes and land forefeitured for back taxes unpaid, for all the uglinesss of millions spent on ZioAzovNaziLensky to get into jets for shopping sprees or photo ops with the Demons of Peace, the US Senate and US Congress and US Administration and the MIC, we are at a point where most people give up, hold up their hands, mutilated by materialism, and then tell me there’s nothing they can do about another trillion dollars for war, or nothing they can do about the homelessness issue, or climate disturbance, etc.
Hands in the air all the way to the Post-Christmas bargain basement sales.
I am hearing from so many people who are damaged, full of the trauma of capitalism, battered and stunted by daily living in a world of dog-eat-dog, where the concept of taking a village to raise a child and taking a village to protect the infirm, old and sick is laughed at. We can get a crypto coin guy a bail hearing for $250 million, and we can see the obscenities of the Wolves of Wall Street dictating who and when and how we, the 80 Percent, pay pay pay for their dirty deals, and we can get Sunday Un-News shows yammering on and on on why there is a food crisis, why there is an energy crisis, and on and on, but what do we really need to solve the problems. We need economics under the umbrella of people, planet, biology, equity.
Steady State Economics, as the Apollo 14 pilot might have advocated:
A steady state economy features relatively stable size. It is ideally established at a size that leaves room for nature and provides high levels of human wellbeing. The term typically refers to a national economy, but it can also be applied to the economy of a city, region, or the entire planet. The size of an economy is generally determined by multiplying population by the amount that each person consumes. This quantity in a steady state economy neither grows nor contracts from year to year. Herman Daly, the dean of ecological economics, defines a steady state economy as… “an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance throughput, that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption.” (Source)
This equitable concept, please believe, is not the wet dream of Kissinger or the World Economic Forum or the Billionaire Gates Class who want all nature under their control, as we are useless eaters to them. This steady state economy is not the Faustian bargain of eugenics, not of one world government controlling Big Brother AI-VR-AR style, not the sort of one NeoLiberal Dictator determining who gets what, where we live, how much space is too much space, for us etc. It is, however, an economy of peace and leaver mentality, this classic connectivity, the interconnectedness of us, the universe, with the mountains, forests, plains, wetlands, coral reefs, and on and on. Again, the Apollo pilot:
Mitchell listed critical planetary boundaries under siege:
(1) rapid population growth beyond sustainability: 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 8 billion in 2022;
(2) degradation of life-sourcing ecosystems;
(3) excessive resource depletion such as shrinking forests;
(4) eroding soils;
(5) failing freshwater resources;
(6) more frequent crop-withering heat waves;
(7) collapsing fisheries;
(8) expanding desertification;
(9) frequency of extraordinary powerful storms;
(10) shrinking natural resources;
(11) melting glaciers.
Again, thinking and acting globally, but also being and believing as a nationstate, and binding cultures and languages as closely to what a people’s history and family tree are worth. Out with the dirty and old, but in with the retrofitted, in with the classic and the things that make sense for clean air, clean water, clean soil, peace and as diseas-free as possible.
But letting science run amok, well, that is the current state, and the economists and propagandists and marketers are believing in their own religious cultism capacity to pull the wool over the collective eyes of us, the 80 Percent.
“The current state of science is not good enough … to either reject, or to accept, let alone implement” solar geoengineering, wrote Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, in an email. The initiative is calling for oversight of geoengineering and other climate-altering technologies, whether by governments, international accords or scientific bodies. “To go ahead with implementation at this stage is a very bad idea,” he added, comparing it to Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s decision to use CRISPR to edit the DNA of embryos while the scientific community was still debating the safety and ethics of such a step.
Shuchi Talati, a scholar in residence at American University who is forming a nonprofit focused on governance and justice in solar geoengineering, says Make Sunset’s actions could set back the scientific field, reducing funding, dampening government support for trusted research, and accelerating calls to restrict studies.
These are very fragile times, and if indeed there is more UFO “activity” for 2022, I wonder what those star people are seeing in us? All those radio and television signals beaming out into space of Hitler, of the killing fields of World War I and II, and Vietnam, and the genocides throughout just the last 122 years. And now, all that negative energy coming from the Nulands, Kagans, Blinkens, Zelenky’s, this Hebrewization of war-economics-poverty, and then all those useless generals and CIA, both the political parties, goy or Jew, it doesn’t matter.
This nuclear posturing by Biden, and now talk of winning and controlling a controlled strategic nuclear strike into Russia, we can you imagine the universe feeling the pain of Homo bellum (war) never learning, always destroying, until we have every fetus incubating inside human or mammal or other species with dozens of forever chemicals, PCBs, hormone disruptors, neuro-destroying toxins. Star people cranking up at light speed, they know the sickenss of this dominant species.
Shall I repeat how destructive this species is, without the Prince of Peace or MLK or the lot of them being listened to and shepherding us into a state of collective whole consciousness? Neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or manmade toxic substances (neurotoxicants) alters the normal activity of the nervous system. This can eventually disrupt or even kill neurons, key cells that transmit and process signals in the brain and other parts of the nervous system.
Is that not the definition of insanity for star people? There is no way the star people had anything to do with Mayan temples, as the Mayans destroyed their civilization because they wanted plaster for the pyramids and buildings. Burning down the low slung jungle and forests to produce lime. There is no way in hell any star person, and Rosewell alien would shepderd that as their goal. The thin epidermis of our atmosphere, the fragility of the combo of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and the rest, whew, only star people would know THEN burning recklessly would punch holes into our life giving and live enhancing heavens.
Law of time, and the noesphere. Go to my blog, and look for Charles Miller and the Law of Time Interview.
Here is another hyper-fear but creative look at how to get out of this mess: (Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD)
I’ll take all this with a grain of lithium salt, as we know the greenies like 350.org and Bill McKibben as all for Biden-Blinken-KIagan-Nuland warmongering. Read Matthew Ehret:
Prince Charles has just given the world 18 months to save the world. Over the past years, the prince and his father (among other inbred aristocrats of Europe) have taken an incredible interest in the safety of the earth from the pollution emitting machines who greedily consume and reproduce without any consideration for Mother Gaia. In recent months this green transformation of the globe has taken the form of the “Green New Deal” promoted in the U.S. by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. A children’s campaign endorsed by pope Francis and led by Greta Thunberg has spread across Europe and America while a Billionaires Club under the guidance of Al Gore, and George Soros is funding a Sunrise Movement to fight global warming.
Is this passion to save the planet from humanity genuine? Do these oligarchs and billionaires really care so much that their support for a Green New Deal is as benevolent as the media portrays… or is something darker at play? To answer these questions, we will have to first quickly review what the Green New Deal IS, then where it came from and then finally what its architects have stated they wish to accomplish with its implementation. (source)
Again, science, with no limits, with no deep holism, without any regard for consequences is devilish. But expecting Indians and nations in Africa to stay in the mud, in huts, with no technology that the West has, is the ultimate of racism.
“It is not the growth of industry which destroys the world’s forests. In most cases, the cause is a lack of industrial output, a lack of good industrial management of the ecosphere. Over the past fifteen years, the greatest single cause for destruction of the world’s “ecology” has been the toleration of the policies demanded by the so called “ecologists,” the so-called “neo-Malthusians” of the Club of Rome, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), of the World Wildlife Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Ford Foundation, the ‘Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Sierra Club, and so forth and so on. We are not putting enough industrially-produced energy, in the form of water management, chemicals, and so forth, into the farming of the Earth’s biosphere. At the same time, we are using biomass for fuel and other “traditional” uses, in cases we should be using nuclear-generated energy supplies, and using modern, industrially produced materials in place of timber for housing and so forth.”
Case closed now. There is no balance, no alternative view, not robust critical thinking, no deep teach-in’s, no debates, no smart people with different perspectives in the same room. The only way to harmonize the quantum us is to bring us back into dialogue, health, peace. Until then, we will be held captive by the monsters, and you know who they are: So, climate change, and no new deal for nature, and really this lock up of the world for the West is the same chavanism of the West and Russia. There is no Plan E for a planet run by Hollywood, Banks, Military, Media, Billionaires, Rotten Digital Gulags.
Our natural world is facing the most serious threats she has ever known.
At the forefront is the accelerating loss of biodiversity, upon which all life depends.
Worse still, this very real threat is now being marketed and exploited in order to reboot the global economy.
Human rights violators WWF lead the charge for this deal, which essentially consists of a neocolonial land grab from the most self-sufficient peoples on the planet, principally in Africa and Asia.
Of course, King was murdered by the Deep State on Steroids:
Both the Jowers and the Wilson allegations suggest that persons other than or in addition to James Earl Ray participated in the assassination. Ray, within days of entering his guilty plea in 1969, attempted to withdraw it. Until his death in April 1998, he maintained that he did not shoot Dr. King and was framed by a man he knew only as Raoul. For 30 years, others have similarly alleged that Ray was Raoul’s unwitting pawn and that a conspiracy orchestrated Dr. King’s murder. These varied theories have generated several comprehensive government investigations regarding the assassination, none of which confirmed the existence of any conspiracy. However, in King v. Jowers, a recent civil suit in a Tennessee state court, a jury returned a verdict finding that Jowers and unnamed others, including unspecified government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King. (source)
“Volodymyr Zelensky Talks Hopes of War Ending During Golden Globes Video Message: ‘There Will Be No Third World War. It is not a trilogy,’ the Ukraine president said in his impact video message.”
Think of that Goebbels-Mengele-Hitler moment, would you? I had a friend who was watching these multimillionaire frauds, the beautiful people (sic) would laugh at her and at me — she’s going through domestic violence hell, divorce hell, with systems that make the victim feel and be guilty. Me? I can write circles around most of those Holly-Dirt frauds, but alas, I am a communist, so, those frauds wouldn’t touch me with a social distancing stick of a thousand yars while all masked up and girdled up with a ZioAzovNaziLensky blue and yellow half assed flak jacket.
Imagine, how many Goyim, Gentiles, even Christians (not all UkroNazi’s are hard-core Nazis and Satanists) are not dead and wounded in the latest meat grinder the little dictator Zelensky is heading up? And he spoke to the Golden Shower Award Recepients while they, 12,000 were KIA-ed and another 13,000 wounded? Some of the UkroNazi soldiers had frostbite on many many feet and toes and fingers, while the multimillionaire war monger, Zelensky, spoke to the cocaine and 12-step Botox folk.
You think King would be angry?
No message of peace from Julian Assange’s wife or father? No real heroes of peace and reconciliation speaking at the dumb-down awards. No heroines of journalism at the awards, uh?
“A major effect of junk politics — its ceaseless flood of patriotic, religious, macho and therapeutic fustian — is to pull position after position loose from reasoned foundations,” writer BenjaminDeMott noted (Hedges and Hedges).
And so, all the creeps in politics, all the heads of corporations, the heads of universities, even military generals, and of course, the Press, Media, they are all two-bit actors, like ZioAzovNaziLensky. (Note: I went to the story on Golden Globes ZioLensky appearance, and it is absolutely disgusting. Sean Penn said the most ludicrous thing, and ZioAzovLensky said nothing, really, pure tripe. Read at your onw risk, and, of course, WWKD — What Would King Do?
And that my kind readers, I know for a fact, would be putting steam under King’s collar if he were around today to see this complete blasphemy of humanity actually entertaining nuclear war, limited strikes, and more war here, there, and everywhere. And a mixed race woman, as VP!
Here, enough of these fascists and perversions of humanity.
King:
The following (scroll down a bit) ran today, Jan. 11, in the little twice-a-week rag out here on the Central Oregon Coast —
It’s mellow for me, not exactly milquetoast, but still the reality if this USA and Canada are racist countries based on Anglo Saxon invasions and pogroms of genocide and land theft and subjugation and insanity. Get those Puritans and Smith Colony and Pilgrims and Mayflower folk here so the City of London to this day can hold it’s genocidal sway over much of the world, even in this post/new colonialism.
From Zinn’s People’s History of the United States: In that first year of the white man in Virginia, 1607, Powhatan had addressed a plea to John Smith that turned out prophetic. How authentic it is may be in doubt, but it is so much like so many Indian statements that it may be taken as, if not the rough letter of that first plea, the exact spirit of it:
I have seen two generations of my people the…. I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. I am now grown old, and must the soon; my authority must descend to my brothers, Opitehapan, Opechancanough and Catatough-then to my two sisters, and then to my two daughters-I wish them to know as much as I do, and that your love to them may be like mine to you. Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that 1 can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, diey all cry out “Here comes Captain Smith!” So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all the in the same manner.
When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indigenous peoples. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indigenous land by declaring the area legally a “vacuum.” The Indians, he said, had not “subdued” the land, and therefore had only a “natural” right to it, but not a “civil right.” A “natural right” did not have legal standing.
The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
*****
Heroes — A million of them, but for now, Paul Robeson, King and Malcolm X (NPR, be careful):
King would be proud of this hero,
Ana Belen Montes has repeated history by saying what she said during her trial 21 years ago: the US government’s policies against Cuba are very harsh and she behaved according to her conscience rather than the law. She added: “I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it.”
If alive, King would be protesting and getting jailed for this hero:
The U.S. imperialists “want Alex Saab like they want Julian Assange to suffer,” charges human rights and international law expert Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, who the United Nations’ Human Rights Council appointed to serve as a special rapporteur.
What is the great “crime” Alex Saab is accused of committing, that caused this South American diplomat to be physically pulled off of a jet while refueling at a remote African island, imprisoned, and reportedly tortured there for about a year before being kidnapped to the U.S.A.?
The U.S. has no extradition treaty with Cabo Verde. Saab was simply seized and flown to Miami without any notification to his lawyers or family. (Source)
And, King, if he were alive, what might he have been doing to free and condemn USA-UK-Sweden-Australia-The World for this hero? Assange.
King would be holding this book, and thousands of others, exposing the cruelty of Capitalism and USA:
Part One of review and discussion of Linda G. Ford’s Women Politicals in America: Jailed Dissenters from Mother Jones to Lynne Stewart (Part Two)
I was born a protester … My mother had to go to the school a lot and talk to the principal.— Dorli Rainey
I am being jailed because I have advocated change for equality, justice, and peace. … I stand where thousands of abolitionists, escaped slaves, workers and political activists have stood for demanding justice, for refusing to either quietly bear the biting lash of domination or to stand by silently as others bear the same lash.— Marilyn Buck, at her 1990 sentencing (epigram in Linda Ford’s book, Women Politicals in America)
Yeah, I sure do miss King as a topic in schools, as a centerpoint to our thinking about war and materialism and predatory and parasitic capitalism! Here, today’s Op-Ed in our small rural county, Lincoln County!
MLK Jr. 56 years ago stated a point more relevant today than a half century ago: The systemic flaws of America have incubated the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”
This MLK Jr. Day was so deemed by Congress in 1994 to mark the holiday as “a national day of service.” Martin Luther King was born Jan. 15, 1929. I’ve done plenty of service-in-service-community service projects with students over the 29 years of the day’s relevance: river clean-ups, working in food kitchens, getting blankets and tents to homeless folk, cleaning up graffiti, and having teach-ins and drive-by photo shoots of neighborhoods.
Here’s this German-Irish white guy (me) today writing about the power of not just King and his activism, but the power of so many people in the civil rights and anti-racist movement who transformed my point of view on so many global and national social justice issues.
In addition, King, for me, would not be so vaunted without my study of Malcolm X. Or Paul Robeson, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, and so many activists in the Black Liberation Movement.
For this county [with 89.1% white, .09 percent African American, 1.5 percent Asian, and then 4.1 percent American Indian and Alaska Native], the concept of not just celebrating King, but drilling down deeply into what he represents/-ed might fall on deaf ears. Putting him into historical context, i.e. learning about those around him before he rose to fame and afterward, adds to the value of King’s prominence.
I had a father who was shot in Korea as a 19 year old and then in Vietnam as a 36 year old. He was in two branches of military as a regular uniformed soldier; for 32 years total. He was always supportive of my journalism, my teaching, my college pursuits, but more importantly, he backed me on my activism. He was a student of history, and the history I embraced wasn’t what mainstream historians were delving into.
For example: Cesar Chavez and his work — National Farm Workers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers labor union. John Trudell, son of a Santee Dakota father and a Mexican mother, who was a poet, song writer, performer and activist.
In this county and in other places, just what does it mean to a majority of the country to give pause around King’s work? The “I Have a Dream” speech will be played in parts, over and over. I have emphasized his letter to clergy and other white leaders, in his jailhouse essay titled, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” written in longhand April 15, 1963.
King’s letter: “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known.”
He also penned from the jail, “The Negro is Your Friend.”
This third Monday in January marks the birth of Dr. King Jr. We need to go beyond a few lines played back from the “Dream” speech or some of the black and white images of his 1963 march on Washington
Throughout my college teaching – in heavily military populated El Paso, Tucson, Las Cruces, and Spokane, including instruction on military bases and posts – I got students to think deeper about King’s life, work, and teachings. Having students read, analyze and discuss his April 4, 1967 speech against the Vietnam War, delivered at New York’s Riverside Church a year to the day before he was assassinated, I ended up rallying sophisticated critiques of King’s impact on the USA.
It was the Vietnam War in King’s time, but my students were facing the Panama Invasion, Grenada, Kuwait, Iraq, contras in Nicaragua, dirty US-backed wars in Guatemala, Afghanistan, and so many other so-called interventions and these proxy wars. Some were Vietnam and Korea combat veterans.
This speech was eviscerated by mainstream Press, including the New York Times and dozens of large daily newspapers. That was the point of having this speech and the Jail speech looked at and parsed – self-critique as a people, as a nation.
King’s first point in drawing the connection between ending racism at home and curbing militarism abroad had to do with the waste of precious resources:
“I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.”
My father was his soldiers’ advocate, having verbally defied some of the businesses in the South that refused to serve his fellow uniformed men in the Big Red One (Latino and Black Americans).
I never got to challenge my CW4 father with so much of history I absorbed. For instance, Costs of War Project at Brown University estimates that the United States is militarily still engaged in 85 countries, enabling or prosecuting wars in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and beyond. Maintaining over 750 overseas military bases have unfortunately spun spending for military purposes out of control, more than at the height of the Vietnam or Korean Wars.
If Dr. King were alive today, he would be expounding against the state of our foreign and domestic policies, and would despair at all this war mongering, especially now with China in America’s sights. An arms race with China is anathema to King’s hopes and dreams of a socially, economically and culturally just world.
King was the antiwar preacher, and he is so right about those triplets – militarism, materialism and racism.
Oh, the fun of these major Mafia Corporations, and the fun of the paid-off media, and the fun of the Polluted Press, and the fun of the Colonized Public, and the Fun of Billionaires like Gates who have invested billions into genetically modified germs and seeds and Round-Up Ready Death.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease involving several protein mutations in glycine-rich regions with limited treatment options. 90-95% of all cases are non-familial with epidemiological studies showing a significant increased risk in glyphosate-exposed workers. In this paper, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®, plays a role in ALS, mainly through mistakenly substituting for glycine during protein synthesis, disruption of mineral homeostasis as well as setting up a state of dysbiosis. Mouse models of ALS reveal a pre-symptomatic profile of gut dysbiosis. This dysbiotic state initiate a cascade of events initially impairing metabolism in the gut, and, ultimately, through a series of intermediate stages, leading to motor neuron axonal damage seen in ALS. Lipopolysaccharide, a toxic by-product of dysbiosis which contributes to the pathology, is shown to be statistically higher in ALS patients. In this paper we paint a compelling view of how glyphosate exerts its deleterious effects, including mitochondrial stress and oxidative damage through glycine substitution. Furthermore, its mineral chelation properties disrupt manganese, copper and zinc balance, and it induces glutamate toxicity in the synapse, which results in a die-back phenomenon in axons of motor neurons supplying the damaged skeletal muscles. (source)
It’s the gut, baby, the entire shooting match is tied to the biome of the stomach, intestines, a la hormones, that endrocrine system, but, heck, why not pour more Velveta on those Doritos and wash it down with that Pepsi while having that Blue Tooth inserted with all those 4, 5, 6 G EMF’s moving around the world? New cancers in the salivary glands? Right, the world does get better with super living with chemistry and forever chemicals.
Again, too much information is a downer, and this post-doc level writing is for the birds, or nerds. That’s the sickness of our times — more and more speciliazation at the sub-atomic level, and more and more general malaise and muddled brains. Whew.
The question is too much for the corporations: “Does Glyphosate Acting as a Glycine Analogue Contribute To ALS?” Here are the keywords: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Glyphosate; Glycine; Fructose; Superoxide dismutase; Mitochondria; Motor neurons; Stress granules; RNA binding proteins
Here, the subheadings: Glyphosate acting as a Glycine Analogue; Evidence of a Link between Pesticides and ALS; Metabolic Disturbances; Gut Dysbiosis; Sulfur Dysbiosis; Mineral Imbalances; Progressive Neuromuscular System Failure; Muscle Failure; Glutamate Excitotoxicity in Synapses; LPS, SALS and Protein Disruption; GGGGCC Repeat Expansion; Collagen in ALS; ALS as an Autoimmune Disease; A Role for Epigenetics.
Ahh, the metabolic disturbances caused by the toxins in the food system, in the frying pans, in the elements used in vaccines and experimental shots. All the Gut dysbiosis, and all the sugars, all the heavy metals, all the brain-guy disturbances, all the leaky gut sydrome sufferers, all the IBS and Chron disease sufferers, all the fatty liver sufferers.
You would think this would be a global multiple headed Hydra of pandemics. From sperm, to egg, to fetus, to child, to teen, to adult, to old person, the amazing connection of those better living through chemistry profits, and our collective health. Nah, it pays to not know:
In the fall of 2014, as voters in Oregon and Washington were poised to vote on whether genetically engineered foods should be labeled, industry allies grew worried about Monsanto’s plan to feature scientists in ads for the anti-labeling campaign. “I’m a little skeptical that a letter with a lot of scientist signatures will be enough to counter the flood of fear mongering,” Val Giddings, the former vice president of the biotechnology trade association, wrote to Monsanto’s Lisa Drake.[1] Giddings suggested the company instead consider creating “TV spots featuring attractive young women, preferably mommy farmers” to persuade voters to vote against labeling requirements. Drake shot down that idea: “Doesn’t poll as well as credible third party scientists,” she told Giddings. “I know [it is] hard to believe but I have seen the poll results myself … and that is why the campaigns work the way they do.”[2]
Monsanto’s PR helpers strategize about how to defeat GMO labeling:
Indeed, the “voices of authority” — especially academic experts — receive the highest marks on trust, according to global surveys.[3] In this context, the growing private-sector influence over universities, and land grant institutions in particular, is concerning. From 1970 to 2014, public funding to land grant universities for agricultural research and development grew by just 20 percent, while private funding grew by 193 percent to $6.3 billion, according to an analysis from the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center.[4] Today, hundreds of millions of dollars flow from agribusiness, including pesticide companies, into land grant universities in the United States. This funding is used to sponsor buildings,[5] endow professorships and pay for research, according to an analysis from the public interest group Food and Water Watch.[6] “The influence this money purchases is enormous,” the Food and Water Watch analysis concluded. “Corporate money shifts the public research agenda toward the ambitions of the private sector, whose profit motivations are often at odds with the public good.” (source)
It’s only 103 pages with 579 citations/footnotes. Come on, people, this is your baby’s future, your fetus’s future, your own future! Too much information is too much anxiety, so we are here, now, GAD, general anxiety disorder, and then, the merchants of propaganda, the Goebbels, Bernays, Mengele, the entire dirty culprits in the Faustian Bargain and the Eichmann Trap.
This is a powerful army of tanks — The report also exposes the dirty pesticide industry propaganda industry:
Seven front groups named in Monsanto’s documents spent $76 million in a five-year period pushing corporate disinformation, including attacks on scientists.
Six industry trade groups named in Monsanto’s documents spent more than $1.3 billion over the same five years, including for PR and lobbying to influence regulation over glyphosate. (source)
Do you kind reader need a recap on all the dirty souls in political office, then in the revolving door to the corporate boardrooms, and then into lobbying groups, and then into media, and then into academia, and even into the courts, including the highest corrupt courts of the land, SCOTUS? Come on, do your due deligence and see the who’s who of corporate crime in and out of public office.
Do you need English and Planning Majors like me to be the town crier? Come on, you smart Yankees and Confederates, do some justice to the k12 education you supposedly got (snicker). All you college grads, do some deep ethical thinking about the courses and matriculations you have taken and achieved (snicker snicker, follow the money).
I’ve talked about literacy, about functional illiteracy, then of course, there are those who fail to read, and then the atrophied minds of those who fail to use even one percent of the brain matter. Consumo Pethicus Sapiens . . . .! The idiots in Congress, the Senate, the Revolving Uniparty Administrations! When you hate truth, when you hate “the government of, for, by the people,” we are here, in 2023!
Do you need charts and graphics to get it that the USA is run by a Corporate Fascist Monster?
You want just one school, on the agricultural Mafia Money Pipeline, in chart form?
You want to check out how many majors in the undergraduate realm get hush and PR and marketing money from the Fortune 5000? Imagine, University of Washington, where I did some union organizing (with many slammed doors in my face):
1. University of Washington
Location: Seattle, Wash. 30,672 undergraduates Number of majors: 227
Most popular majors:
– Speech Communication and Rhetoric
– Psychology
– Biology
Oh, dudes and dudettes, believe you me, here, a ranking of the top 20 colleges in USA with the most majors: Source! Just how man provosts and deans and institutional managers want students and faculty alike to shut their traps when researching anc criticizing this bribery racket, and it is a racket that also is funneled through these Fortune 5000 thieves’ non-profit, philanthropy, giving offshoots.
Then you have this scam, US News and World Report’s Best Universities of 2022. Here, the graduate schools and their top majors: Marketing Junk!
Oh, those Ivory Towers:
Then, of course, those vaunted eight continuing criminal organizations, the League of Ivy:
So, what’s it take? A master’s degree in science communications? An engineering degree? A PhD with post-doc work? Ten professional journal publications? A hundred? Common sense? Understand the precautionary principle? Getting systems thinking under your belt by age 16, or 20? Do no harm, the oath for doctors, tatooed on your forearm if you are in the medical field? Repetition of the so-called scientific principles of ALWAYS questioning hypothesis? Or, what about just following the money and understanding what outside influences are in any profession?
And that paper you are going to read? Just realize that ALS is just ONE outfall of this dirty toxin, glyphosate, which is so close to the progenitor, Agent Orange:
A Real-life Toxic Avenger — She lost (sic) four children in a very suspicious fire on their property when she was delivering bread to a neighbor.
From her book, A Bitter Fog, what those sprays do to people:
Where the road skirted the riverbank, overhanging shore and water, they directed their hoses into the water, inadvertently spraying the four children fishing down below. The truck moved on, leaving the children gasping in a wet mist that clung to their skin and clothing. With smarting skin, tearing eyes, burning mouths, throats and noses, they stumbled home. By nightfall, all four were sick.
If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed whether by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.
— Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, p 13
So, yep, what does it take for us ALL to get involved with what is vitally important – our own health, our children’s health, friends’ and family members’ health? Jan. 6 hearings? Pelosi bowing out? Zelensky and his Soft Shoe Show? What is it that will move the needle in this time of multiple plagues? Again, this is just ALS:
We have shown how a cascade beginning with gut dysbiosis, progressing to liver disease, muscle failure, and, finally, wide-spread damage to motor neurons in the spinal column, can lead to a diagnosis of ALS after several decades of chronic exposure to glyphosate. Other NDG diseases have considerable overlapwith ALS in terms of the characteristic feature of misfolded pro-teins accumulating in inclusion bodies in nervous tissues. We believe that glyphosate is a strong factor in the alarming rise inmultiple NDGs well beyond ALS. Especially given the insidious and destructive effects that glyphosate can be expected to induce through substitution for glycine during protein synthesis, regulatory agencies should seriously consider banning glyphosateusage to control weeds or for any other purpose.
Lois Gibbs and Love Canal. Karen Silkwood? Rachel Carson? What’s it going to take? US Marines? “Semper Fidelis or Das Kapital Uber Alles: From Eisenhower to Trump!” (DV)
Studies have shown that water contamination at Camp Lejeune has been linked to these injuries:
Bladder Cancer
Cardiac Birth Defects
Kidney Cancer
Kidney Disease
Leukemia
Liver Cancer
Multiple Myeloma
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma
Parkinson’s Disease
Systemic Sclerosis/scleroderma
Additional injuries that may be linked to the water contamination are:
Breast Cancer Esophageal Cancer
Hepatic Steatosis
Brain/CNS Cancers
Pancreatic Cancer
Prostate Cancer
Rectal Cancer
Female Infertility
Lung Cancer
Miscarriage
Aplastic Anemia and other Myelodysplastic Syndromes
Neurobehavioral Effects
Usage of the herbicide glyphosate on core crops in the USA has increased exponentially over the past two decades, in step with the exponential increase in autoimmune diseases including autism, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, coeliac disease, neuromyelitis optica and many others. In this paper we explain how glyphosate, acting as a non-coding amino acid analogue of glycine, could erroneously be integrated with or incorporated into protein synthesis in place of glycine, producing a defective product that resists proteolysis. Whether produced by a microbe or present in a food source, such a peptide could lead to autoimmune disease through molecular mimicry. We discuss similarities in other naturally produced disease-causing amino acid analogues, such as the herbicide glufosinate and the insecticide L-canavanine, and provide multiple examples of glycine-containing short peptides linked to autoimmune disease, particularly with respect to multiple sclerosis. Most disturbing is the presence of glyphosate in many popular vaccines including the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which we have verified here for the first time. Contamination may come through bovine protein, bovine calf serum, bovine casein, egg protein and/or gelatin. Gelatin sourced from the skin and bones of pigs and cattle given glyphosate-contaminated feed contains the herbicide. Collagen, the principal component of gelatin, contains very high levels of glycine, as do the digestive enzymes: pepsin, trypsin and lipase. The live measles virus could produce glyphosate-containing haemagglutinin, which might induce an autoimmune attack on myelin basic protein, commonly observed in autism. Regulatory agencies urgently need to reconsider the risks associated with the indiscriminate use of glyphosate to control weeds.
** This one is a 32-page article with only 201 endnotes. More happy reading!
Delusional thinking. Trapped inside a world of knee jerking. Multi-Generational Trauma on steroids. Fear thy self and thy enemy, so self-loathing in a bipolar self-aggrandizing flipping. Yo-yo thinking.
If you attempt to get a bead on the “situation,” you know, THE Situation, it is almost impossible to be and to live and to survive in this society without many forms of media and collective consciousness pollution from flooding even a 9 to 5 and 8 to midnight, M-Sunday worker, busting his butt with two jobs.
The air is a miasma that is impossible to shelter from, and the spirits are wandering hoping for some form of sanity in the living. No matter how you open up your phone — and it is always on, no, 24/7 — or how you navigate your working life, the dirty deeds of the marketers and madmen and the propagandists and behavioral mad scientists and political pirates come through. You can not shelter yourself completely, or even partly with any significant buttressing against the poison of our times.
No man or woman is an island, no matter how hard some of my email friends think they are that Island in the Slipstream having checked out of the good old USA or Canada. Living in Baja, setting up a simple palm frond hut and simple low water and low yield garden, sure, it is an Island Unto Itself. But, in Baja, in Mexico, with so many injustices around and near and possibly just down the road? How does one buffer one’s totality from all of that?
There is a certain instantaneous insanity that captures the world, even the ones in Nomad-Landia or Off-the Grid-Landia, because to be of this world, is to be of this world. Same old passport, USA, no matter where one might find his or her island of peace. More power to them. But the DNA is pretty much a determinant.
Yet, some of us are navigating other rough seas, and sure, what a deal, getting out of Dodge City to end up in some red-tiled roof town in the grape vineyard hills of Portugal, with full WiFi, a heck of a Saturday market, and stroller dancers on Wednesdays and free museum entry on Mondays. The Church bells, the uniformed school children kicking footballs and drinking lemonade.
It’s that easy, no? Good health, at least a cool $500,000 in some investment portfolio, and, hmm, minimum, what $4,000 a month, not counting many “incidentals”?
Okay back to earth and gravity. I was looking into school bus driving since Joe Biden’s and FDR’s Social Security is an utter joke. Actually, just van driving was the ad I answered, as in special needs. Oh, that old time monopoly religion, and that old time making money off of the taxpayer, and that old time transnational fun. I was skirted into getting a commercial driver’s license, because the school district is hurting for bus drivers. I wonder why.
With more than a century of experience in providing safe and reliable transportation to students across the U.S. and Canada, we at First Student understand the priorities of today’s K-12 community. We can help you build a transportation solution tailored to your community’s needs.
Think Brussels, as this company’s headquarters is ensconced well in one of those lovely expensive buildings:
EQT Infrastructure completes acquisition of First Student and First Transit, the market leading providers of essential North American transportation services.
Oh, so, who is selling the taxpayer down the proverbial river without a paddle? And, these companies, like First Student, has 55,000 mostly part-time drivers and others, and that is just one aspect of our so-called public schools selling the public down the private sewer hole. That’s right, the janitorial services and food services, run by another privatizing baron, Sodexo:
Founded in Marseille, France, in 1966 by Pierre Bellon, Sodexo is the global leader in services that improve Quality of Life, an essential factor in individual and organizational performance. Operating in 56 countries, Sodexo serves 100 million consumers each day through its unique combination of On-site Food and Facilities Management Services, Benefits & Rewards Services and Personal and Home Services.
Yikes, they used to be a big private prison builder:
Sodexo does not contract with any prison entities, detention centers, or correctional facilities, public or private, in the United States. Sodexo does not operate any prisons or detention centers in any of the countries with the largest number of prisons. We provide food for staff and prisoners, maintenance and, in some cases, prisoner skills training, education and programs in 84 prisons in mainland Europe and Chile. Sodexo also fully manages five prisons – all in the United Kingdom.
An article in The Independent reported that inmate Natasha Chin was found unresponsive in her cell in 2016 at the Sodexo-operated prison HMP Bronzefield; her death was attributed to “medical neglect” on the coroner’s report.
In 2021, at HMP Peterborough, female prisoners reported having inadequate access to menstrual care products and other sanitary items. In 2017, four HMP Peterborough inmates were unlawfully strip-searched.
Companies, such as Marriott International, and private individuals’ lawsuits against Sodexo allege discriminatory lawsuits and mistreatment of employees. Since 2000, Good Jobs First, a subsidy and work violation tracker, reported over $103 million has been paid in penalties by Sodexo. (source)
Oh, I had talks with food services and the administrations in two colleges, asking why local amazing caterers in Spokane could not get on our community college campuses with the cafeteria contract. I talked with local caterers who certainly could’ve fulfilled a healthy and creative food and beverage contract with the schools. And still following a local farmer-production ethos.
However, it’s all about economies of scale, underselling, and giving away (sic) funds at the end of the year for student and faculty groups. Legal (sic) bribery.
Staffing K12, and colleges, well, done by outsourced staffing and professional head hunter outfits. Money money money in every aspect of the taxpayer base.
Back to the First Student. I had to get fingerprinted, and then I took the commercial learner permit test, at $60 with Oregon DMV (I took two of the four tests over). Then, well, I was supposed to get some medical check. In the end, the $13.50 an hour for the training period that will eventually get to $19.00 an hour to have all those K12 students on the bus, pick up and drop off, that’s it for this multi-billion dollar monopoly. Tons of on-line junk, and again, more middle application services running part of the show.
Note: The local Air B & B is paying $21 an hour for that service. Sure, you have a time limit, and, sure, you have to photo each room, and upload to prove to the Vacasa outfit the job was done, and to shunt any complaints from the next renter who might lie about garbage still in the pails or sheets in the washer.
In the end, everything about capitalism, whether it is transnational, monopoly, casino, parasitic, what have you, is absolutely against the worker, counter any collective bargaining, without regard to health and safety, anti-getting ahead for the lower economic class, and antithetical to a great work environment, etc. We have no single payer affordable health care-dental care-mental health care. We have outrageous de-regulated air travel. We have no train travel of note. We have not local public busses or micro-vans running 24/7. And, mom and pops can’t deliver kids to and from school because of the super high insurance rates, the litigation threats and expensive fuel costs. Again, the money is made by having money, by deploying economies of scale, through sophisticated thuggery with their lobbies and lobbyists, by stashing politicians in their pockets, by going IPO with publicly traded status, and through the endless graft and grifting galore.
We have turned our own citizens against our own public services — bridges, roads, biologists, justice departments, criminal investigators, FCC, SEC, you name it, we have become a nation that hates anything that might be government regulation and citizen oversight, in favor of this childish attitude: “the companies and corporations, they want to do good, because they have kids and families too, so why would they pollute them or endanger them . . . so let the corporations run America?” This mentality gets some of us to the point where a few vaunted ones and some middle class ones just want to get hell out of the USA because of these top reasons: broaden your horizons; moving abroad is a wonderful challenge; cheaper than you’d expect; new kinds of food; better education prospects; the main reason that people move abroad is employment; learn a new tongue; let go of the stress and let your new environs take over; build your confidence; lose your attachment to things.
This is the rationale for the new expats who want a fully WiFi, Zoom ready community up in the hills with the sheep, yodelers and fresh cheese.
Tens of millions of European and North American immigrants, legal and illegal, have been flooding both the cities and countryside in Asia, Latin America, and even Africa.
Western migrantsare charging like bulls and the ground is shaking under their feet; they are fleeing Europe and North America in hordes. Deep down they cannot stand their own lifestyle, their own societies, but you would hardly hear them pronounce it. They are too proud and too arrogant! But, after recognizing innumerable areas of the world as suitable for their personal needs – as safe, attractive and cheap – they simply pack and go!
We are told that some few hundred thousand African and Asian exiles are now causing a great “refugee crises” all over Europe! Governments and media are spreading panic, borders are being re-erected and armed forces are interrupting the free movement of people. But the number of foreigners illegally entering Europe is incomparably smaller than the number of Western migrants that are inundating, often illegally, virtually all corners of the world.
No “secret paradise” can be hidden any longer and no country can maintain its reasonable price structure. Potential European,North American and Australian immigrants are determined to enrich themselves by any means, at the expense of local populations.They are constantly searching for bargains: monitoring prices everywhere, ready to move at the spur of the moment, as long as the place offers some great bargains, has lax immigration laws, and a weak legal framework.
Everything pure and untapped gets corrupted. With lightning speed, Western immigrantsare snatching reasonably priced real estate and land. Then, they impose their lifestyle on all those “newly conquered territories”. As a result, entire cultures are collapsing or changing beyond recognition.
So, here we are, the transnational, economies of scale, end of mom and pop shops, with a big fish eats little fish mentality as oppressive as anything the Amazon Publishing, Starbucks Coffee, Well Fargo Banking can deliver us. Pick an industry or service industry, and you can see what monopoly looks like and how each year the shifting baseline moves closer and closer to us being those useless eaters and workers and breathers. Until, taking care of precious children, youth, before and after school, on slippery and icy roads, we get paid as bus drivers less than, well (not to knock people who clean for a living), but toilet and laundry cleaners.
Do your own research — check out the top mining companies, top offensive weapons companies, top lumber companies, top grocery chains, top insurance, top medical services, etc., etc. You end up with fewer choices, bigger barons.
And we aren’t just consumers and marks and interest rates and fines and penalties and fees and closing costs and overdrafts and tickets and maintenance fees and tolls and VATs to them. Each way, each step in this Western Culture, each transaction, each nanosecond that might give “them” a chance at marking us for rip-off, i.e. profits, we become useful idiots and useless everything else.
And we come down to this — public schools, taxpayers, footing the bill for major investment companies that rule the yellow bus mafia?. This is the way of Capitalism. You get $19 an hour driving a bus with school children, but $21 an hour cleaning up after a bunch of beer-drinking, dog-peeing, messy and dirty Air B & B customers.
Headline news, no: “AOC Casts House Democrats’ Sole Vote Against Omnibus Spending Bill: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez cited ‘the dramatic increase in DHS and ICE spending’ as the reason behind her vote.”
Oh, wouldn’t it be a fine thing in the neighborhood if this AOC went rogue, Independent Party, on her hands and knees, and apologizing:
I should have never supported any 350 (dot) org or Al Gore or Hollywood’s “new green deal” because it’s all smoke and mirrors and carbon credits and more millionaires and billionaires making hay on the big green lie
I should have called out the accused rapist Biden as “not in my name, not in my party,” early on and just weathered whatever storm would follow
I should have never supported one dime for Israel or the Hebrewization of Politics-Business-Media-Finance-Banking
I should have called out Pelosi for what she is — stock investor (sic) in war, chemicals, energy, and of course, recepient of inside trader dealing for her hubby
I should have brought Cynthia McKinney and Jill Stein into my fold
Oh, cry for me Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran: should have showed guts and not supported regime change
Should have called a Jewish Conspiracy Spade a Spade with the Maidan, with Nato, with EuroTrashLandia’s sickness and hate against Russia
Should have stood against corruption and thieving and murder and cancelling parties that Ukraine is all about
RE: Green as the New Black =
Resistance is imperative | A panel discussion on dismantling the “New Normal” nightmare
Cory Morningstar has very meticulously, and very brilliantly, analyzed the deep connections that Greta has to the many power-structures, all of which seek to change the world. This excellent research should be widely read.
But why Greta? Why her photo? The clue lies in what she really advocates – the Fourth Industrial Revolution, aka, the New Green Deal. This is, very simply, transhumanism, which is the creation of a bio-digital world, where technology merges with humanity.
The oft-heard mantra of the environmentalists, “Change Everything,” means changing what it means to be human, what it means to work, what it means to be free, what it means to live a happy life. In short, it is Neo-Eugenics – or, the improvement of humanity by way of technology. This gives a whole new meaning to Greta’s iconic phrase, “I want you to panic.”
Thunberg is the eldest of two girls and is the daughter of actor Svante Thunberg and opera singer Malena Ernman. She was born Jan. 3, 2003, in Stockholm, Sweden.
She is distantly related to Svante August Arrhenius, the first scientist to predict that carbon emissions would lead to global warming. He received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1903, becoming the first Nobel laureate from Sweden. So an influence in Thunberg’s mindset might be understood.
A NEW PIECE of evidence has emerged buttressing the credibility of Tara Reade’s claim that she told her mother about allegations of sexual harassment and assault related to her former boss, then-Sen. Joe Biden. Biden, through a spokesperson, has denied the allegations. Reade has claimed to various media outlets, including The Intercept, that she told her mother, a close friend, and her brother about both the harassment and, to varying degrees of detail, the assault at the time. Her brother, Collin Moulton, and her friend, who has asked to remain anonymous, both confirmed that they heard about the allegations from Reade at the time. Reade’s mother died in 2016, but both her brother and friend also confirmed Reade had told her mother, and that her mother, a longtime feminist and activist, urged her to go to the police.
Hebrews and Nazis = “Medvedev: Israel arms shipments to Ukraine will destroy relationship with Russia — ‘If they are supplied with weapons, then it is time for Israel to declare Bandera and Shukhevych their heroes.’”
Listen to Matt on how all of this is an Anglo Saxon conspiracy:
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accrued millions from husband’s trades: report”
McKinney =
In April, U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., got in a whole heap of trouble after she called for a thorough investigation of what George W. Bush knew before September 11 about the potential for the sort of terrorist attacks that would shake the nation and the world on that fateful day. McKinney is one of the most outspoken members of the current Congress and her statements were typically blunt. “We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th,” she told a radio interviewer.
“What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? … What do they have to hide?” McKinney’s call for a real investigation of what Bush knew — along with her parallel suggestion that it was necessary to conduct a review of possible war profiteering by members of the Bush administration and corporations with close ties to the president — drew a firestorm from pundits and partisans. By John Nichols
Jill Stein =
Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua =
U.S. President Joe Biden’s top Latin America advisor has admitted U.S. sanctions against Russia over Ukraine intentionally seek to hurt Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
The United States imposed a series of harsh sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on February 21, and its subsequent military intervention in Ukraine on February 24.
Juan S. González, Biden’s special assistant for Latin America and the U.S. National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, made it clear that these coercive measures against Russia are also aimed at damaging the economies of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba have socialist governments that Washington has long tried to overthrow. All three currently suffer under unilateral U.S. sanctions, which are illegal according to international law. (Ben Norton)
Nuland and Kagan and Blinken and … =
Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her, because the U.S. corporate media’s foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden’s pick for deputy secretary of state for political affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia.
Nor do they know that from 2003 to 2005, during the hostile U.S. military occupation of Iraq, Nuland was a foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of the Bush administration.
You can bet, however, that the people of Ukraine have heard of neocon Nuland. Many have even heard the leaked four-minute audio of her saying “Fuck the EU” during a February 2014 phone call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.
During the infamous call on which Nuland and Pyatt appeared to be plotting to replace or undermine elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, Nuland expressed her not-so-diplomatic disgust with the European Union for favoring former heavyweight boxer and austerity champ Vitali Klitschko to take over as prime minister, instead of the U.S. first choice, Artseniy Yatsenyuk, who indeed took power after Yanukovych was ousted about three weeks later. (source)
Although many of you have heard about its Trotskyite origins, the neoconservative movement as we know it today dates mainly from the 1960s. It was in that decade that you see the startling rise of Holocaust consciousness beginning with the Eichmann trial and the Oscar-winning movie Judgment at Nuremberg, both of which had a major impact not only on the Jewish community but on the general public here as well. These events were followed by the rise of the New Left, the Counter-Culture, and the anti-war and Black Power movements, as well as the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. All of these left a number of mainly—but by no means exclusively—Jewish public intellectuals and liberals feeling, in the words of Irving Kristol, “mugged by reality” in a way that launched them on a rightward trajectory.
That trajectory gained momentum in the early 1970s, when the anti-war candidate, George McGovern, won the Democratic nomination for president, and when Israel seemed to teeter briefly on the edge of defeat in the early stages of the 1973 war, which itself was immediately followed by the Arab oil embargo. Two years later, the UN General Assembly passed the “Zionism is Racism” resolution, and U.S. power globally seemed in retreat after the collapse of its clients in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. These all created a context in which neo-conservatism gained serious political traction.
At this point, it may be useful to address an important ethno-religious issue. Neoconservatism has largely been a Jewish movement. By no means, however, are all neoconservatives Jewish. The late Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, former CIA chief James Woolsey, and Catholic theologians Michael Novak and George Weigel are just a few examples of non-Jews who have played major roles in the movement.
That said, it’s true that most neoconservatives are Jewish and, increasingly, Republican.
“Ukrainian Regime Led by Media Darling Volodymyr Zelensky Kidnaps Student Dissidents, Bans Opposition Parties, Shuts Down Independent Media, Commits Egregious War Crimes and Imposes Regressive Labor Laws”
Oh, well, AOC is not made of that fiber, and she is not anything special, and she is a product of celebrity cultism, backroom dealing, and, well, who the hell would okay a Netflix documentary (sic) on her so, so short life?
And what does the DSA have to show for a half century of working within the Democratic Party? The party has abandoned any pretense to social reform, it has waged permanent war and overseen a massive growth in social inequality. The “realignment” strategy paved the way for the Democratic Party’s rapid movement ever further to the right. It succeeded in facilitating the Democrats’ adoption of identity politics, based on doling out privileged positions to corrupt representatives of various racial groups, and a more open acceptance of human rights imperialism.
Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA are carrying forward their pro-imperialist, anti-communist traditions into the 21st century. Their main role, as expressed in the interview, is to serve as gatekeepers of the bourgeois political left, channeling social opposition into the Democratic Party and placing its left opponents beyond the pale. Those who fight to mobilize the working class (“class essentialism”) for a break with the Democratic Party are “cynical bad faith actors” who want to “destroy.” (source: “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounces socialists and praises Biden administration, Democratic Party”)
Note
My apologies for any false hope here: Oh well, just a thought experiment for my blog, really, just 15 minutes of ruminating. Now get back to your day! No room for beyond hope: by Derrick Jensen “Beyond Hope“!
Frankly, I don’t have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.
To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes lead to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness. One reason my mother stayed with my abusive father was that there were no battered women’s shelters in the ’50s and ’60s, but another was her false hope that he would change. False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities.
In 20 years of teaching at Doane University, Kate Marley has never seen anything like it. Twenty to 30 percent of her students do not show up for class or complete any of the assignments. The moment she begins to speak, she says, their brains seem to shut off. If she asks questions on what she’s been talking about, they don’t have any idea. On tests they struggle to recall basic information.
“Stunning” is the word she uses to describe the level of disengagement she and her colleagues have witnessed across the Nebraska campus. “I don’t seem to be capable of motivating them to read textbooks or complete assignments,” she says of that portion of her students. “They are kind kids. They are really nice to know and talk with. I enjoy them as people.” But, she says, “I can’t figure out how to help them learn.”
Marley, a biology professor, hesitates to talk to her students about the issue, for fear of making them self-conscious, but she has a pretty good idea of what is happening. In addition to two years of shifting among online, hybrid, and in-person classes, many students have suffered deaths in their families, financial insecurity, or other pandemic-related trauma. That adds up to a lot of stress and exhaustion. In a first-year seminar last fall, Marley says, she provided mental-health counseling referrals to seven out of her 17 students.
Oh, so much to unpack just in these paragraphs, let alone from the report. Hmm, so, since 1983 I have been teaching at colleges and universities, both community colleges and state universities, and even a private high end (sic) college. Seattle, Auburn, Spokane, El Paso, Las Cruces, and, other places, including Portland and Vancouver. I have also been a graduate student twice, with two hard-earned master’s degrees, while teaching at the same time.
Disengaged is another term for dead-end capitalism. Or, go follow the money. Or, the rich get richer and the poor get nothing. Amazing how quickly the baseline has shifted: When I was an undergraduate, I could fill up the car for $9 bucks, drive to Mexico, do a diving trip, get on a train and hit up Chihuahua and Copper Canyon and end up spending $50 with some good tequila and food thrown in. That was a trip that enabled culture, man, cross cultural learning, and using a language other than my primary one, and interacting with people, sea, land, and getting life to the fullest.
Not really possible today without a big wad of Benjamins, for sure, and, yes, there are no sleepy little calm fishing villages in Mexico or Central America anymore. It is a war zone in most places now for the on-the-cheap traveler.
This world, now especially, is part of the quickening, as youth are seeing the collapse of so much around them. Parents are on meds, and so much work is needed to patch up communities. Disengagement is also seeded throughout the public. Stay at home and slurp up terrible flicks on Netflix and see your life frittered away. The backyard is the playground. Go out to eat through the drive thru, or do take-in. The fabric of a community has always been frayed. Columbine, you know, suburbs of ennui and sick video games.
The K12 schools are rotting to the core, and that includes so much politicalization, so much mediocracy, so much empty heads, rah-rah, political incorrectness, so much cancel, litigation, and the end of history, so to speak: right-wing nuts are always right-wing nuts, and the liberal class is ugly in shutting down debate, so ugly on the PC and cultural vapidity. It costs money to do basketball or baseball since summer leagues are what it’s all about. Sick capitalism.
Main Street is rolling up, thanks to on-line hell shopping, and meds are the way for 50 percent of the peeps, and, the oppressive politics of dementia at the top, war mongering in the middle, and even the metro-sexuals and the middle of the road “liberals” have created splattered thinking. No one wants to be involved, and TikTok is Jerry Springer on steroids. Sick, painful, hurtful, prat fall, bridge jumper fun for all. That also has created a toxic background noise.
What to know, what to learn, how to move one step ahead? So, this is a racist country, but the new and next gilded age and classism are also on steroids.
It is one giant psychological experiment, swarm fear thinking, hive bandwagoning. Just one big event — Ukraine’s racism, attacks on civlians, the American Coup of Maidan, all of that, while this creep and smoke and mirrors criminal, Zelensky, gets more and more bucks, propaganda kudos and a complete psychological training on how to manipulate his own people, the gentiles, the Nazis — it is emblematic of the entire grift. And then what is happening in Europe, and in Canada, and in the USA, how this dialing for war lord bucks game never ends, nary a protest launched, and then the absolute corruption in that country, the new Jerusalem, and then the 24-hour news covering it, as in lies and bigger lies 24-7; and then China, and then COP26, and then the economy, stupid, and the celebrity venereal disease that is marketing and info-tainment and coverage of the most meaningless stuff. How can youth get a handle on anything, and so why is poetry important or learning what photosynthesis is? Where is the job and money in that?
How to bring a classroom into the community, and how to engage across all disciplines, and how to respect faculty, how to downgrade the institutional learning-management departments, and how to defund the Admin Class? Sports and campuses that are going hybrid? This must end before learning can begin.
Yep, being a true blue radical faculty is tough because careerism and the death of the true liberal class have created a campus and set of cohorts who are in many cases checked out and co-opted by capitalism.
As I’ve said many times — we need education that is cooperative teaching and mentoring across curriculums, and we need the business schools to go the way of the dodo, and why in hell are their ROTC programs in these schools, and what the hell are the drone degrees doing in schools? How much influence do those private and government grants have on the ethos and philosophy of a school?
K12? A complete overhaul, and then again, end Capitalism. You see, the people in a representative democracy need their own lobby, i.e. the poor people’s lobby, and the getting poorer lobby. End the tax abatements, the tax dodging, and alas, really, end shit jobs. Bring together the many generations, and of course, this is about dental-health-mental health-nutrition clinics in all neighborhoods, and then flip the curriculum and have those places as incubators of youth helping their communities. End this for-profit-everything/anything mentality.
Engaging youth in college? What the hell, man? So many chronic illneses, GAD (general anxiety disorder) and so much collective Stockholm Syndrome. The people in the Yale-Harvard-Elite Schools camp are running roughshod over us, the people, over the youth, with all of this techno hell, all of this tracking and Chromebook-soon-to-be-at-home-miseducation. Imagine a world without art classes, music, hiking, botany, learning city zoning by walking the hoods. Imagine a world that is 3D manipulated, thrown onto a digital dashboard, VR and AI and AR, where digital tokens are there for crumbs of incentives while the digital master metaverse mind and AI gatherers work out more ways to put youth into a digital gulag?
There should be a million boats, safari jeeps, teepees, tents, community school gardens, K12 and intergenerational stage plays, poetry slams, bio-blitzes, and so much more: for youth to go whale watching, fishing, out in wilderness, on farms, learning ancient wisdom from Native Americans, growing food, participating with elders acting, singing, and going out to learn ecosystems. Done deal! Paid for by the corporations, the billionaires, by us, the people, the It Takes a Village to Raise a child humane person. Instead, we are atomized, and being snookered by the pigs of Capital, all of them, telling us we need to work for them more, to devote 60 or 80 hours or a 100 hours a week to them. Musk, Bezos, Buffett, Walton, et al.
On shifting responsibilities —
“Our administration has shifted responsibility onto faculty more and more. I am now expected to be an instructor, career counselor, mentalhealth adviser, and personal coach.” —Biology instructor at a California community college
“Who is caring for the faculty who are supposed to be doing all this extra stuff for students without extra (or even adequate) compensation?” —Literature professor at a public university in North Carolina
“I fear it will take some time to bring us all back mentally and emotionally to the campus life we experienced before the pandemic. Administrations can speed this up by devoting time and resources to support all of us. They can also be creative about incorporating what we’ve learned about learning and mental health in the pandemic into a “new normal” campuscommunity life. Are there campuswide actions that could be taken to support the grown-ups on campus in their efforts to reach and support students? It feels like so many things are siloed when it’s becoming apparent we’re dealing with a systemic concern that very likely would benefit from some systemic interventions that support everyone.” — Beth McMurtrie, senior writer at The Chronicle.
Disengaged means stripped of the ability to put sweat equity in your neighborhood, town, zip code, public spaces. In fact, public spaces are stripped away, public transportation is a living hell of a joke, and the silos in society — those who dictate to us — have become more draconian with computing technology. The planned pandemic and shut downs and sickening measures to social distance, to pull the Covid19 lie wool over our eyes, were just trial balloons in the capturing of more people into this world of fear-anxiety-self-doubt and bowing to the masters. We are in a constant airport line, shoes off, bodies scanned, eyes captured, treated like cattle, manure, and we have accepted this as the price of being Homo retailpithecus, Homo erectus consumopithecus.
This is not a Larson haha:
We have broken pipes and leaky roofs and dams about to burst and rivers drying up and toxins by the dozens in fetuses and unimaginable brewing chronic illnesses because of food, air, water, drugs, vaccines, and more. Yet, we have that time to spend trillions on war, and then, the cultural wars, while people die or freeze and get amputations or, well, the anxiety is the gift that keeps on giving in Capitalism as Inflammatory Disease:
Sign up for this one coming Jan. 2023:
Join our SAND Community Conversation with guests Raj Patel & Dr. Rupa Marya as they illuminate the hidden connections between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. What is deep medicine? How can re-establishing our relationships with the Earth and one another help us to heal? We will combine Patel’s latest scientific research and scholarship on globalization with stories of Marya’s work with patients living in marginalized communities to begin to grasp the deep medicine that has the potential to heal not only our bodies, but the world. (SAND — and, you can put 0[zero] into the $ for a ticket and still get the Zoom Link, if you are financially struggling!)
Like I said in a past piece, “A Bird of a Feather — Unexpected Africa” — there were 60 people at this amazing photo-slide show/talk, on a Thursday, 6:30 pm. and no one under age 55 showed up. Imagine that, a perfect opportunity to talk to an artist, photographer, bird guy who grew up in Oregon and became an illustrator. No kiddos, no college students.
There is a crisis in the home, inside the family, and throughout extended families which are spread like knapweed seeds all across the land. There is no cohesion and no multi-generational connectivity. Having kiddos play the K12 idiota game is yet another way to strip away any interest they might have or what might be developed to go outside the boxes we have set for them to, well, fail, or become great consumers.
Engaged means dynamic, loud, sometimes over the top faculty like me being supported to be that, and to do some PT Barnum teach-ins, and have people from outside the education system come on campus.
SFCC presents tree seminars
Spokane Falls Community College presents a demonstration by Northwest Plant Health Care, a local tree service, on growing healthy ponderosa pines at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at the cluster of ponderosa pines, southeast of the athletic field, adjacent to parking lot 9P, 3410 W. Fort George Wright Drive.
Participants will learn how to remove dead limbs from their trees. Arborists use ropes and no spikes to scale the tree and the dead limbs are cut to the trunk of a limb or the tree itself.
The event is free, and refreshments will be served.
On Wednesday, a panel discussion on the significance of trees takes place at 11:30 a.m. in SFCC’s SUB Lounges A and B, Building 17.
The panel members include: Rich Baker, working arborist; Carrie Anderson, Urban Forestry Council; Jim Flott, private tree consultant and former Spokane City forester; and Joe Zubaly, owner of Northwest Plant Health Care Inc.
This series of food-related columns by Haeder continues with: Jobs Not Jails – Riverfront Farms is About Digging the Soil; Urban Gardens Make Community – Pat Munts, mini-farm advocate; Flat Out Community Partnership – Vinegar Flats and East-Perry Market Are Value Added; Unmasking the Food Sleuth – Melinda Hemmelgarn on Food Media and the Balance of Power
You probably remember Winona LaDuke as the two-time Green Party vice presidential candidate, running with Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004. You probably didn’t know that she’s an enrolled member of the Anishinaabeg Tribe from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, where she’s locked in another tough battle — this time against huge multinational corporations that want to change her tribe’s traditional way of life.
At three engagements in Spokane last week, and in some private interviews, LaDuke talked about the need to defend native peoples’ rights to the Earth. And this epic debate can fit into a single grain of wild rice — the Manoominike-Giizis strain, or the “wild rice moon” grown by her people for many generations.
This small grain of plant life serves as a microcosm of the entire sustainability challenge we all face: making sure future generations — all peoples and all species — will have a planet worth living on with ecosystems and resources to achieve spiritual and material prosperity.
LaDuke has proven to be so much more than a media darling — she’s a spiritual guide for her tribe and for the thousands she’s come across along her journey. Mixing humor with a shaman’s intensity, LaDuke has written books like All Our Relations and Recovering the Sacred.
LaDuke sees the Minnesota reservations’ practice of harvesting wild rice as vital: “The wild rice harvest of the Anishinaabeg not only feeds the body, it feeds the soul, continuing a tradition which is generations old for these people of the lakes and rivers of the north.”
It struck me last week while spending time with LaDuke that her tribe’s battle to keep their wild rice wild, free from genetic manipulation, is a much more far-reaching illustration of what sustainability activists consider the struggle of our times: How to create an America that respects the land.
Many of us think along systemic lines, attempting to understand the steps the globe probably has to take to solve the collapsing systems, both environmental and societal. Yet we need reminding that this struggle to work with a burgeoning global human population — 9 billion by 2050 at the current 1.2 percent growth rate — needs nudging from storytellers like LaDuke.
Her struggle — our struggle — is tied to the biodiversity of wild rice, a sacred food. There are more than 60,000 acres of natural wild rice growing throughout the lakes and rivers of her tribal lands. But there are troubling parallels drawn to what’s happened to the sacred corn of Mesoamerica at the hands of the agri-business multinationals, where corn has been patented, controlled and even turned into what some call Frankenfood.
Domestication and genetic modification of wild rice threatens the genetic integrity of this plant. For more than 30 years, plant breeders have developed wild rice for commercial paddies. So today, most of the wild rice on the market comes from these paddies, almost 70 percent of it from California. “Millions of pounds of California wild rice comes into [Minnesota] to be processed,” says LaDuke, “some of that rice, if genetically engineered, would irreversibly contaminate our manoomin.”
LaDuke’s tenacity in understanding the sacred and reclaiming the wholeness of her people’s food is a valuable lesson for our times. She’s up against the juggernaut of Monsanto and Dupont, the largest seed companies in the world. Monsanto has spent $8 billion in the last few years buying up United States seed companies, while Dupont purchased Pioneer, the second largest seed company in the world.
“This concentration of control over world seed stocks is alarming to farmers on a worldwide scale, especially considering that the closer seeds seem to be held, the fewer there are.”
LaDuke puts all of our struggles into a feedback loop, connecting wild rice in Minnesota to sustainability in Spokane with the goal of creating a more independent, safe and stable food supply. “However you cut the statistics,” LaDuke says, “from the villages of India to the villages of northern Minnesota, there is a marked loss in worldwide biodiversity, and a closer hold on who controls the remaining seeds of the world.”
This issue of control took me back 32 years, to the time I was a newspaper reporter in the middle of a struggle for the soul of a mountain.
Environmentalists were trying to stop my school, the University of Arizona, from building roads and locating a large mirror telescope on Mount Graham, a 10,000-foot sky island sticking out of the Sonora Desert. Mount Graham was named after a white man who rode through the area many years ago, a Colonel James Graham, but for generations the San Carlos Apaches had referred to the entire range as “Pinaleno,” meaning “many deer.” It’s the holiest place for the Apaches, who acquire the power to become medicine men and women through singing and collecting herbs and water on that mountain.
Despite the importance and traditional use of the place, roads were cut and the telescope went up. LaDuke and I talked about that struggle, and she shared many similar struggles currently unfolding in Indian Country and elsewhere.
LaDuke’s power is in her ability to unearth the history of Native people’s struggles — and how that history is relevant today. There has been a lost connection between how the land should be used and how it actually is used — from wild rice in Minnesota to telescopes in Arizona. Reconnecting with the land is another step in the process, as her book puts it, of reclaiming the sacred.
**Paul Haeder is the sustainability liaison at Spokane Falls Community College, where he also teaches English. His KYRS radio show, Tipping Points: Voices on the Edge, covers sustainability issues.
For years I worked my ass off creating special events, and bringing people from outside whichever college I was working at to engage with ideas, with students and faculty. It was an uphill battle, and being in the English Departments at respective institutions, I was not dealing with people who had a full deck upstairs, if you know what I mean. I did radio weekly shows, interviewed so many people I helped to bring to town. I helped create a Vietnam 20 Years After the Fall of Saigon event, with dozens of venues and speakers and events and films.
The entire mess of USA is bleeding into everything, really, until we are at 2022-2023 with a world about to implode here there everywhere, and our youth are bogged down with commercialism, dead end education, foggy brains, endless lies and Orwellian Big Brother moves, until we have generations in the main fagged and ready to throw in the proverbial towel.
That’s not to say those rich kids, those kids in bigger cities, with government or academic or big player parents guiding them into special trips, programs, coaching, are not getting to the top of the Predatory and Insane Capitalism that is always vaunted, no matter which criminal billionaire or multimillionaire is put ont he pedestal. Imagine all the Eichmann Faustian Bargains, and these valued children of the upper economic class, the rich, will then in turn be the master blasters of the majority of good, decent youth who must follow the Dystopian Blues.
Yeah, Master Blaster a la Road Warrior:
Almost everything I did above and beyond just teaching would be disallowed today, and much of what and how I taught would be trigger warning material, stopped, and then, here we are, 2023 on the solstice horizon. Hell, most k12 kiddos don’t even know what a solstice is. Sad, destructive, anti-human.
Yes, it’s difficult for people to think it’s dry in Oregon, along the coast, along the Central Coast range. But it is, and it’s wet in the winter, too. Breweries, shrimp industries, hotels, they use a lot of fresh water.
But the reality is clear — America is so dysfunctional, that those trillions thrown at billionaires and military et al., well, not for the people, by the people, because of the people. Remember, this story about Newport, around 10,000 folk, with a swelling of 20,000 or more visitors during any fun given weekend of summer beach activity, is also your story in San Francisco or Boise or Hope, Arkansas. The very debilitating aspect of predatory capitalism is tremendous — so your flagging infrastructure should be our flagging infrastructure, and it all should be taken care of by taxing billionaires, millionaires and ending war economies and the Complex.
The earthen dam is failing, and will fail completely, with some earthquakes that will hit our coast. This is the reality anywhere in the USA — wildfires, tornadoes, dust storms, droughts, blizzards, deluges, heat waves. We have money for trillionaires, for the mercenaries of Military-Pharma-Chem-Mining-Ag-Oil-Energy-Media-Education-Medical-Legal-Prison-Education-AI-Surveillance-Mining-Finance-Banking Complex, but not $$ for a few million-dollar water tank, or a $20/$80 million dam for Newport, which will also give water security to other places around Newport for which we call this area “home.”
We are a third world, banana republic —
On a recent visit to the upper dam, Newport city manager Spencer Nebel pointed to a large pipe sticking out of the facility. He explained how crews just fixed one leak there and said it will need more work next year.
“(I) hate to make this kind of investment here for a facility that we’re planning to replace,” he said. “But it is a legitimate safety concern. And the security of the system is critical for the community and for the folks that live downstream.”
Now the city plans to build another, concrete dam halfway between the two older ones.
“So if we can build a higher dam and build a bigger basin, that’s going to reduce our reliance on the Siletz River, which is a really important environmental consideration here,” Nebel said. “And we’ve been working closely with the Siletz Tribe.”
Historically, Pacific Northwest tribes have often not been supportive of government-built dams, because of their propensity to block fish runs. But Robert Kentta with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians said pumping water out of the Siletz River every summer is really bad for salmon, lampreys, crayfish and river mussels.
“We had the lowest flows that I can remember and I’ve lived here for nearly 60 years,” Kentta said. “It was scary low and scary warm. It was like bathwater, and we’re just not used to those kinds of temperatures in our river.”
Kentta said a new, larger dam and reservoir on Big Creek would mean more water could stay in the Siletz River and more fish would likely survive. (Source)
In this broken land, where the coroporations have huge lobbying outfits, huge industry coalitions, have huge organized protection rackets, we the people are up shit creek since living in the USA is all about paying for it, paying for water, air, all of it, through regressive and quadruple taxation. Through taxes, fines, code violations, penalties, late fees, pre-fees, tolls, service charges, disposal charges, recycle fees, surcharges, add-ons, restrictions, eminent domain, externalities, we are left to the devices of elected officials and state agencies and this hyper-competition looking for grants, lobbying bucks, pork barrel.
Oh, America, the Banana Republic: Nearly 40% of Americans Live in Constant Risk of Catastrophic Explosion or Poison Gas Exposure – People of Color, the Poor, Schools, and Medical Facilities at Even Greater Risk!
So we are here, with the most broken society ever, as we have smug lockdown forced vaccine (sic) pro-incarceration people advocating all manner of illegal, unconstitutional and inhumane measures, and yet, and yet — never holding the billionaires who are war-pandemic-planned-demic profiteers accountable. It is ugly, that Biden thing, all his Neoliberal War Hawk Handlers, all the same old same old. Embarassing to see the Republicans in their racist zeal hold onto their KKK robes, and singing Dixie in their million-dollar bathrooms.
Here’s that coronavirus map, well, the one that should be part and parcel in this bullshit manic narrative:
Those drug overdoses, man —
It’s the war profiteering, man, and the trillions shipped to war lords, mining lords, Zionist lords, ag lords, chemical lords, all those lords of punishment-theft-disease-pollution-societal collapses
It was a good live crowd — over a hundred folk, November 30, at Hatfield’s new classroom building, Gladys Valley Marine Studies Building Auditorium. And another 100 in “attendance” on the Zoom Doom.
I’m a member of the Cetacean Society International, and the American Cetacean Society, and unfortunately for the Oregon group, their meetings and live speakers have retreated to the digital dungeons, never having face-to-face meetings anymore in Newport. That is the sham and the shame of this new abnormal. Even this OSU event had the live component, with a bistro in this overpriced new building, and beer and wine, also available. Fancy auditorium, no?
I did a story on this building in its construction stage, here:
I covered a conference, too, again, three years ago, when the local rag let me write a long form column on a regular, paid basis: “Should We Trust Science? (Conference celebrates how the ocean connects to all of us — coastlines, people, cultures”)
I have written about my love of ecosystems, marine systems, and my dive bum days, and, of course, I have also written stories on ecosystems and marine biology, etc. There are many stories still to be told, but last night’s talk by Leigh Torres, Associate Professor, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and Oregon Sea Grant, was a recap of all the work she and her graduate (PhD and MS) students have been doing on gray whales, including the distinct Pacific Coast Feeding Group, numbering around 250.
There were other scientists there, and there were many young students from the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center. Older retired folk were there, and I had a sense that most people there were somehow associated with the university, with marine sciences, directly or through a relative engaged in that avocation.
As I’ve said before, there are many women going into the sciences, and you can see Leigh below with her skiff and her female graduate students working on drone surveillance and other forms of research to get more data on the gray whales on our coast.
A talk like this is all about loving those cetaceans, and our PCFG draws people from around the country to our coast for whale watching. May through October, they are here feeding. Depoe Bay is a great spot to watch.
Below images and videos, and at the end, is the actual Power Point Presentation from the November 30 presentation.
These scientists want to know why the Pacific Group is sticking around our coast and not heading to the Arctic with the majority of gray whales. The whales all calf in the waters of Baja. Then, the trip north. They number for all groups around 20,000.
Basic ecology and animal-mammal biology mean looking at how they “are” in their environment, what their hormones show, and what is happening to their prey. The fact this Pacific Feeding Group is in highly human-influenced/disturbed waters is also a point of research. Then, of course, we have their prey as well as in noise and as in boats coming up to them, and as in the crab pots that cause entanglements.
And, those strikes, those hulls and propellers hitting whales:
Diet for these whales?
As part of the research they look at the energy of whichever species the gray whale eats, as seen above. And, since 70 percent of the prey is mysid shrimp, the scientists want to know what those animals have in their bodies.
We are THE plastic species, as is the entire ocean. The gray whales have small fiber plastic — microplastics — and then beads in their feces. They are eating prey that has plastic in their bodies, and they also scoop up water and dirt that also have plastic in it.
In pregnant and lactating females, the amount of this zooplankton they have to consume is 1.5 to 2 tons of prey a day. The bio-accumulative effect of the plastics is huge under those tonnage numbers.
The underwater Go Pro Cameras give some cool images of gray whales in action. The poop or fecal samples give the scientists the cortisol levels — stress hormone — in the animals. There are unusual mortality events, one big one happening in 2014 in Mexico. Many of those animals were emaciated. Many animals die, and sink to the bottom of the ocean.
The estimated 14.3 million to 23 million microparticles of plastic per ton of shrimp they eat HAS to have an effect on total physiology of the animals.
Then we have the entire web of life — sea stars, kelp, urchins, the zooplankton, all of that.
We have urchins going up in population, as the health of kelp, zooplankton, and gray whales feeding zones is declining. Sea stars eat urchins, as do sea otters. We have no marine otters here on the coast of Oregon, and the sea star wasting disease has decimated that species, allowing for more urchins, which eat young kelp. Kelp beds are rookeries, and the zooplankton/meroplankton need that web of life.
The grays need that zooplankton to survive.
The end goal is to get this PCFG categorized as a distinct subspecies, to have them protected.
Again, science in a time of climate disruption, pollution, over-harvesting, and disturbances in food webs is both interesting and reliant upon year after year of more and more data, more and more bearing witness to declines in species. As the scientists get smarter with smarter tools, the general population and politicians at large get dumb and dumber.
Here’s a fact: One of the most dynamic and depressing jobs in the world is being a sea turtle expert. I remember him at the Bioneers events I was a part of, Wallace J. Nichols. Here, quotes:
Ocean plankton provides more than half of our planet’s oxygen.
Education should be based on simple awareness: Awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: This is water.
Cool, and depressing, because species are going, going and gone.
We see here on the pages of Dissident Voice pieces on climate change, climate change fatigue, climate change cover-ups, climate change as a hoax, and climate is or is not related to CO2 released into the atmosphere.
Because education and discourse and the media all entwine to create silos and camps and sort of groups of people unwilling to talk, or learn, we are in big trouble.
Species like whales have always been the mega species that get to your hearts — you know, mammals, out there in the big blue, animals that were once land animals.
The science is cool, and expensive, and, yes, all those folk at the auditorium, I am not sure if they’d show up for homeless veterans and families stuck in the woods with leaky tents and zero chance at housing because of felonies, evictions, etc. talk.
We are an interesting species, are we not?
And, the reality is we do not need to have year after year of studies from hundreds of scientists around the world to wonder what the microplastics are doing to us, mammals, as they spread and embed in our bodies, inside cells, you know, it is sort of NOT the thing we should be accepting in mother earth — forever chemicals, PFAS’s, neurotoxins in babies, well, you get the picture.
More science to study cigarettes to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that smoking hurts lungs? That smoking most definitely causes cancer?
Since the sun is hot, it gives off energy in the form of shortwave radiation at mainly ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. Earth is much cooler, so it emits heat as infrared radiation, which has longer wavelengths.
[The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all types of EM radiation – energy that travels and spreads out as it goes. The sun is much hotter than the Earth, so it emits radiation at a higher energy level, which has a shorter wavelength.NASA]
Carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases have molecular structures that enable them to absorb infrared radiation. The bonds between atoms in a molecule can vibrate in particular ways, like the pitch of a piano string. When the energy of a photon corresponds to the frequency of the molecule, it is absorbed and its energy transfers to the molecule.
But back to whales! We have a planet that is under huge stress. The lifestyles of the rich and famous and disgustingly insane billionaires and millionaires, and, of course, the upper part of the collective west, they are the killers. WE throw away giga tons of food, products, things each year. WE do not build for durable and long-lasting effect anymore. Throw it all away, and out with the semi-used, in with the new style. Planned and perceived obsolescence. What is the embedded and life cycle of everything? We are wasteful and dirty.
It’s cheaper to toss the helicopter overboard than to bring it home. Agriculture is at war with nature, with ecosystems, with all the real natural services mother earth gives.
But the yammering and yammering about how greenhouse gasses do nothing to warm the planet, to acidify the oceans, or that pollution doesn’t cause acid rain, all of that, plus how many species of meat for humans are destroyed because of Avian flu or salmonella or lysteria or, well, you get the picture, none of it is put together to look at what capitalism is, really. Barbarism, savagery.
Oh, the isle of rabid men: The Whole Foods decision comes after the Marine Stewardship Council and Seafood Watch recently pulled their lobster endorsements over concerns about risks to rare North Atlantic right whales from fishing gear. Entanglement in gear is one of the biggest threats to the whales, they said.
Yep, those democratic governors, and jobs, and, a way of life:
“Maine Senators Susan Collins and Angus King, Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, and Governor Janet Mills today released the following statement after the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) announced plans to temporarily suspend their certification of Maine’s lobster fishery. In their decision, MSC acknowledges that while the Maine fishery meets standards for sustainability and environmental impact and is unlikely to cause harm to right whales, it is unable to certify any fishery that is not in compliance with federal regulations – a standard MSC believes the fishery does not meet due to the ongoing litigation in CBD v. Ross.”
Today’s decision by the Marine Stewardship Council to temporarily suspend certification of Maine’s lobster fishery is the result of a years-long campaign from misguided environmentalist groups who seem to be hellbent on putting a proud, sustainable industry out of business without regard to the consequences of their actions. While the Maine industry met the highest standards for environmental sustainability and impact, the current pending CBD v. Ross court case led by the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Humane Society of the United States made certification impossible. This litigation is based more on activism than evidence and is putting livelihoods in jeopardy.
So, designating the PCFG as a distinct and need-to-be-watched/protected species will then, hit not just the crabbers, but our Makah:
Makah Whaling – A Gift from the Sea
Whaling and whales are central to Makah culture. The event of a whale hunt requires rituals and ceremonies which are deeply spiritual. Makah whaling the subject and inspiration of Tribal songs, dances, designs, and basketry. For the Makah Tribe, whale hunting provides a purpose and a discipline which benefits their entire community. It is so important to the Makah, that in 1855 when the Makah ceded thousands of acres of land to the government of the United States, they explicitly reserved their right to whale within the Treaty of Neah Bay.
Makah whaling tradition provides oil, meat, bone, sinew and gut for storage containers: useful products, though gained at a high cost in time and goods.
The Makah Whale Hunt
To get ready for the hunt, whalers went off by themselves to pray, fast and bathe ceremonially. Each man had his own place, followed his own ritual, and sought his own power. Weeks or months went into this special preparation beginning in winter and whalers devoted their whole lives to spiritual readiness.
Men waited for favorable weather and ocean conditions and then paddled out, eight in a canoe. They timed their departure so that they would arrive on the whaling grounds at daybreak.
Paddling silently, whalers studied the breathing pattern of their quarry. They knew from experience what to expect. As the whale finished spouting and returned underwater, the leader of the hunt directed the crew to where it would next surface. There the men waited.
We are in weird and broken times. War, war makers, war manufacturers, billionaires in Monaco with Lamborghini’s with Ukraine licensce plates. Sunny place the size of Central Park but with shady deals. Billions disappeared for ZioAzovNaziLensky. Billions, man, and the money is being made vis-a-vis crypto currency; the scams, all of the money laundering, and we sit and watch the world burn.
Jobs of whalers, jobs of tobacco farmers, jobs of gun-bullet-missile makers, jobs of all those alphabet agencies, jobs of the hedge funders, jobs jobs jobs on the chopping block . . . and what about that way of life jeopardized — the survival of the dirties, meanest, most monster-like species. One giant Faustian Bargain on a planet that, well, you climate change deniers, you techno fascists, you gurus of WEF and great reset, disbelieve then that the planet is in bad shape.
And, the auditorium was filled with middle and upper middle class folk, probably more PhD’s in one room ever along the Oregon coast, and they had the fancy salads, triple Americanos, hoppy drafts and local wines.
For a talk, man, and Leigh is good, but to be truthful, the talk was high school level, really. And, she’s given the same talk three years ago, live, in the Newport library, for the local American Cetacean Society, before those people went underground, in the Zoom Doom Rooms, never to be seen again at a live event.
These are strange times. Whale watching for a feel-good touristy cause, but whale watching boats are part of the problem. There are calls to curb the watcher boats in Puget Sound. Here, a great interactive series:
Man-Woman, versus beasts. All that hi-tech equipment, all the plastics in the scientists’ tool kit, all the gasoline and diesel and electricity expended to research. Yes, these people have their hearts in the right place, but scientists are still data freaks, and they do not have hard spines when the world needs steeled spines in the mix. All that state-funded, taxpayer-paid-for bricks and mortar and all the money spent to create these institutions of higher learning, yet, these smart people are not on the front lines, and god forbid we talk about CAPITALISM, because, colleges, all the grants, all the bells and whistles, it’s still about CAPITALISM.
But the Makah?
The 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay could not be clearer: The U.S. government agreed the Makah Tribe, natives of the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula, had “the right of taking fish and of whaling.”
Yet across nearly a century, the tribe has organized just one whale hunt, a much-protested outing in May 1999. Starting in the 1920s, the Makah stood down from whaling because of global over-harvest of whale populations. With the once-endangered Eastern North Pacific gray whale population now flourishing, the tribe should be allowed to resume the traditional, treaty-guaranteed hunts around which generations of Makah built a culture.
Species survival is no longer a reason to stop the Makah from hunting whales. Researchers estimate there are almost 27,000 Eastern North Pacific gray whales today, though the Western North Pacific population remains endangered. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has tracked the status of these pods of whales for years and considers the current Eastern numbers approximately the maximum the habitat can sustain. (source)
We are in a rape culture. We have a million examples in this neoliberal and neocon country of that. We have the fact of one out of 12 or 15 girls and women losing their viriginity through sexual assault. We have what — one out of five in this country experiencing sexual assault by the time they hit 40 years of age.
The reality is we have Clarence Thomas as one of the Supremes, with his sick attack on Anita Hill, as well as girls and women at large, and then the frat boy Kavanaugh, more male human stain. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, 55, is a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University who grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC. She’s also a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. And her testimony was lambasted by a lot of men. Joe Biden attacked Anita Hill during her testimony to try and keep the Criminal Clarence off the bench. Dear reader, you can provide countless examples of rape culture, misogony, and the unending attack on women.
It is a worldwide phenomnem. Sure, we can get the New York Post or Jerusalem Post reporting on this most recent incident, without really getting under the molting skin of Western Culture:
A Pakistani father has been arrested in the suspected honor killing of his 18-year-old daughter in Italy after she refused an arranged marriage, police said Friday.
Shabbir Abbas was taken into custody in his village in the eastern Punjab province last week after a tip-off by Italian authorities and local police, senior police official Anwar Saeed Kingra said.
The suspect’s daughter, Saman Abbas, was last seen alive in late April by neighbors outside her family’s home in the farm town of Novellara, near the city of Reggio Emilia.
A few days later, a Milan airport video showed Saman’s parents, who had reportedly been pressuring her to marry a man she had never met, catching a flight to Pakistan.
Abbas’ arrest comes just days after a body was discovered in a shallow grave in an abandoned building near the Pakistani family’s home. (source)
Of course, violence, as we say, domestic violence, is a specific sort of hatred and overt misogyny. Yeah, Israel and so many other countries do their thing against innocent people because they know destroying teens and old men and old women destroy the cultural safety net.
Beware of anything tied to religion, tied to USA and Israel, too — it’s not just (sic) an honor killing. These demons in Israel know what they are doing to the dignity and mental health of young women. Here,
A Palestinian woman filed a complaint after being subjected to an intimate search. Her story reveals the tip of an iceberg of Israeli misconduct, excuses, and cover-ups at the highest levels of the security and justice establishment.
by Kathryn Shihadah
In recent weeks, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz has been reporting on a disturbing case opened in 2018 by the Israeli State Prosecutor’s Office. The story reveals Israel’s official complicity with the intimate body search of at least one Palestinian woman, and Israel’s investigative agency’s unwillingness to police its own.
Israel has a long history of strip searching women and children, first revealed by If Americans Knew in 2007 (see this and this) and in number of additionalreportssince.
Following is a recent egregious example, and complicity at the highest levels of the Israeli security and justice establishment.
In 2015, Shin Bet and Israeli military personnel raided the home of a Palestinian woman suspected of having links with Hamas (the elected body ruling in Gaza) in order to confiscate cell phones and tablets. The woman cooperated, and the Israelis located the devices. They still needed to find a SIM card.
A high ranking Shin Bet officer (male) apparently told an Israeli military officer (also male) to order a body cavity search – an act that was not only unjustified, but may be considered rape and sodomy.
The military officer ordered the woman to be taken to a room and stripped, and two female soldiers (one a doctor) to perform the search; that is, she was searched twice. Nothing was found, and no one along the line of command questioned or reported the order (the SIM card was later found in the woman’s bedroom).
This rambling preamble is a way to set the stage, sort of speak, to a simple case (very complicated, actually) of how one 38 year old woman from Canada (who I just met in February) got hooked by a 36 year old from Arizona in their 5 year long relationship where the man drank daily into black out drunkenness, and, continuously attacked her, defamed her, humiliated her, exacted complete control over her. Intimate violence is one term for this. Yes, a woman who speaks and reads three languages, who had her own restaurant in Guatemala, and who is bright and confident, has a family — parents and sister — in Canada — but she was set into a trap where her good nature and her vulnerability (cultivated early, from her youth, as well as from how she was brought up, and from her family’s own issues with abuse) was exploited by a very mean, Doctor Jeckle, Mister Hyde guy who, of course, has his own victimhood as a youth by a horrible father and horrible mother.
The writer accusing Donald Trump of raping her 27 years ago said the former U.S. president defamed her a second time last month by falsely telling his social media followers that he had not known her and the rape never happened.
E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, made the accusation in a lawsuit she plans to file on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24, accusing Trump of battery over their alleged encounter at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. (source)
Biden?
When alleged rapists are members of a group Trump likes, however, he is more sympathetic. In 2013, in response to the Pentagon’s annual report on sexual assault, he tweeted: “26,000 unreported sexual assults [sic] in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”
“I do remember her telling me that Joe Biden had put her up against a wall and had put his hands up her skirt and had put his fingers inside her,” LaCasse said. Tara Reade, as detailed in a previous NPR report, has accused Biden of pinning her against a wall in the hallway of a Capitol Hill building and penetrating her vagina with his fingers in the spring of 1993.
The Biden campaign denies the alleged incident, as do longtime Biden staffers whom Reade worked for at the time.
The Biden campaign did not specifically respond to the latest developments, but pointed NPR to its previous statement, which said that the alleged incident “absolutely did not happen.” Biden has not addressed the accusation himself.
AMERICA’S ACCOUNTABILITY PROBLEM is being laid bare. Once a global superpower, today jeers of “failed state” better describe our geriatric empire. Having survived impeachment, America’s acquitted president poorly navigates an unclear future as a pandemic rages and a recession looms, leaving hundreds of thousands dead in its global wake. An embattled population barrels toward a national election between two accused rapists and known liars: President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden. (source)
I’m getting there, toward the Domestic Violence platform from which to continue, but this context is needed to validate how both the abuser and the victim is put into a cultural overlay and underlay of what makes people think they are or are not abusers, how victims see themselves, what the society sees and doesn’t see, how courts do and do not validate spousal abuse, and this amazingly complex issue of a victim’s mind rewiring to develop this yo-you of returning back to the abuser, and how Stockholm Syndrome is very real when it comes to domestic violence. Here, rape culture, and if you are smart, delve into news, study Hollywood, study so much in this society — and I am a male, so I have been in situations as a police reporter, a high school athlete, teacher of military personnel, and more, which gives me insider insight from males who have some of the most evil things to say about women, wives, girlfriends, daughters, et al.
Rape is the nation’s most underreported violent crime, according to U.S. Justice Department statistics, as survivors fear that juries will believe the perpetrators, not them, and if they pursue justice, they may suffer further physical, economic, or social harm.
Honor killings, murdering women land defenders, raping boys and girls in wars, the football macho culture, the Hollywood dramas, hell, even Marilyn raped by Zanuck:
In Joyce Carol Oates’ 700-page novel, Blonde, the lead character is usually named as Norma Jeane, the name Monroe was born with and known by until her movie career took off. Later, she is “Marilyn Monroe”. During the second world war, the novel’s Norma Jeane works at Radio Plane, a company doing war work – and the future star did work at such a company. Later, when she finds fame, she marries first “the Ex-Athlete” and then “the Playwright” – transparent references to Monroe’s husbands Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller.
Sexual experiences, mostly miserable ones, dominate Blonde – with an emphasis on the tyranny and treachery of many of her men. Early in the book, Norma Jeane is raped by a Hollywood studio mogul who is allotted the name “Mr Z”. The rape scene is graphically written, sparing no detail. “Mr Z” has been interpreted as a thinly veiled reference to the founder of Twentieth Century Fox, Darryl Zanuck. The real-life Monroe recalled “casting couch” sex encounters . . . .
Rape. Sexual assault, but rape. Forced, unsolicited, not wanted forced sex. Biden, Clinton, Trump, et al.
The hero, the baseball freak? Beat the crap out of Marilyn, which is Domestic Violence. So many doubt he did it, and alas, this is where we are in 2022.
The DiMaggio character’s last scene in “Blonde” is when he confronts her back at their hotel room. He calls her “a (expletive) whore” and gives her a beating so violent that director Andrew Dominik apparently thought it would be more dramatically effective to take it off screen.
Was DiMaggio really so controlling and abusive? Did he truly lose it over “The Seven Year Itch” scene? In many ways, this view of DiMaggio is true, according to biographies, news reports and eyewitness accounts.
DiMaggio was “obsessed” with Monroe, tried to control his wife’s career, discouraged her from taking roles that reinforced her sexualized blonde-bombshell image and wanted her to dress more modestly and not outshine him in public, Slate reported.
If Monroe didn’t comply, DiMaggio became physically abusive, Slate reported. Monroe’s plight is confirmed by his son, Joe DiMaggio Jr., who once recalled waking up to “the sound of my father and Marilyn screaming,” the New York Post reported in 2014, citing the book, Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love by biographer C. David Heymann.
“After a few minutes, I heard Marilyn race down the stairs and out the front door, and my father running after her,” DiMaggio Jr. continued. “He caught up to her and grabbed her by the hair and sort of half-dragged her back to the house. She was trying to fight him off but couldn’t.”
Monroe also confirmed that her participation in The Seven Year Itch led to the end of their marriage. She was quoted as saying, “exposing my legs and thighs, even my crotch — that was the last straw,” according to Biography.com. (source)
Photographer George S. Zimbel recalled everything going deathly quiet as DiMaggio, present for filming the scene, stormed away from the set. A violent fight followed at their hotel, according to Zimbel.
I’ll give the list here, first, and then continue with the personal story:
One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.
An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year.
Historically, females have been most often victimized by someone they knew.
Females who are 20 – 24 years of age are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence.
Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, on average, more than three women and one man are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day.
In 70 – 80% of intimate partner homicides, no matter which partner was killed, the man physically abused the woman before the murder.
It is estimated that anywhere between 3.3 million and 10 million children witness domestic violence annually.
Boys who witness domestic violence are twice as likely to abuse their own partners and children when they become adults.
Thirty to 60% of perpetrators of intimate partner violence also abuse children.
The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services.
There are 16,800 homicides and $2.2 million worth of (medically treated) injuries due to intimate partner violence annually, which costs $37 billion.
Fifty percent of battered women who are employed are harassed at work by their abusive partners.
Approximately one-half of the orders obtained by women against intimate partners who physically assaulted them were violated.
More than two-thirds of the restraining orders against intimate partners who raped or stalked the victim were violated.
Intimate partner violence affects people regardless of income. (source)
What follows is a 1,000 word piece that will appear in the local twice-a-week newspaper in my neck of the woods, Newport News Times, which is now under a paywall. It will appear around December 20 (I get a 1,000 words space every 30 days thus far). You know, discussing domestic violence during the holiday season when more abuse situations explode like a festering stye. Remember the stories of women trapped with their abusers during planned pandemic lockdowns? (A report released in 2021 by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice shows that domestic violence incidents in the U.S. increased by 8.1% following the imposition of lockdown orders during the 2020 pandemic.)
Violence against women increased to record levels around the world following lockdowns to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The United Nations called the situation a “shadow pandemic” in a 2021 report about domestic violence in 13 nations in Africa, Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. In the United States, the American Journal of Emergency Medicine reported alarming trends in U.S. domestic violence, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline (The Hotline) received more than 74,000 calls, chats, and texts in February, the highest monthly contact volume of its 25-year history. (source)
Black and Blue – Domestic Violence is a Tale of Multiple Abuses
By Paul K. Haeder
The month of October and the color blue signify yet another “awareness” month (October). Domestic Violence is an issue that should be, unfortunately, recognized and dealt with 24/7, 365 days a year. Every single day! December historically has been the month when DV cases/incidents rise.
In Lincoln County, spousal abuse ranks high on many of the crimes ending up on the police blotter.
This newspaper covers plethora of arrests tied to assaults that are indeed in the realm of domestic abuse. In many cases alcohol and drugs are the driving force behind many cases. We can get deep and say an abuser probably comes from an abusive childhood, but it’s difficult to conjure up sympathy for a man who punches, strangles or stabs his spouse.
Front page newspaper stories about accused abusers are both dramatic and informative for the community, but the reality for the abused seeing a headline and reading a detailed story of her perpetrator’s arrest is both unsettling and validation.
This County has a major lack of so-called “services” for those impacted by domestic abuse. There are no multiple so-called safe houses for sheltering the victim (My Sister’s Place), or easily accessed dynamic programs to assist victims (and a victim includes both the spouse and children and pets when families are involved).
The Lincoln County District Attorney’s office has decent prosecutors, for sure, and there is a Victim’s Assistance staff doing amazing things; there are even so-called Domestic Violence-focused judges in this neck of the woods. I have personal experience with a sheriff deputy investigating a case of wife abuse which encourages me about the character of some cops.
Imagine, a deputy telling a victim that “. . . it’s not your fault, this guy targeted you, and you are powerful, smart and worthy of a loving, respectful relationship.” This deputy, in fact, lives in my community, Waldport, with three children and wife. I see how invested he is in creating a safe community for all of us.
Unfortunately, for women, the cycle of abuse includes the yo-yo motion of both psychological factors and the action of returning to their abusers. The relationship that involves physical and verbal abuse is one of co-dependency and actual physiological changes in the woman’s brain.
We can call the Stockholm Syndrome-like actions of a victim a “dual relationship between the power of the abuser and the weakness of the abused.” Obviously, high profile and highly successful women – CEOs, business owners, et al – can be that “victim,” as well as any sort of woman on various social determinant spectrums that predicate economic, psychological and educational outcomes.
People in marriages and relationships whose partners are abusers can develop Stockholm Syndrome towards any person who has an eerie degree of power over them. We see this with anyone in interpersonal relationships with — husbands, wives, partners, parents, grandparents, children.
I’ve seen this up close and personal here in Lincoln County with several people who have reached out to me and my resources to flee abuse. The syndrome is built on a foundation of fear, threats, and isolation, and is generally believed to require victims’ belief that they can’t escape the situation they’re in.
The foundational ingredient (or poison or dark magic) is these “small acts of kindness” on the part of the abuser, whether real or perceived. Behind all that darkness, the abuser’s own actions are looked at “as a source of the flame of something to live for.”
This entails a complex set of cultural, interpersonal, and psychological elements. The abuser can be seen as a monster – and there are outright monsters I have seen as a reporter, case manager and brother of a sister who managed safe houses and DV programs in Arizona – or a charmer.
Some of the common personality factors in an abuser include narcissism, low self-esteem and a long list of elements to include:
A history of abuse in one’s family or past
Being physically or sexually abused as a child
A history of being physically abusive
A lack of appropriate coping skills
Untreated mental illness
Drug or alcohol abuse
Socioeconomic pressures or economic stress (studies show a higher incidence of abuse in lower-income communities)
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Emotional dependence and insecurity
Belief in strict gender roles (e.g., male dominance and aggression in relationships)
Desire for power and control in past relationships
While there may be a history of attitudes accepting or justifying violence and aggression in American society, as well as studies citing the US as a rape culture, the fact is women especially have so many challenges accepting they are abused, believing that they are not responsible for the abuse and not falling into despair and creating their own isolation as the abuser’s perceived and real power over a woman’s life dominates.
The cycle of mental, economic and physical abuse inside a relationship that is abusive includes the psychodynamics of perpetrator and victim. The idea of understanding one’s victimhood in whichever culture a woman lives (some men, of course, are victims, too) is to dig deep into that culture’s treatment of families, women, mental health as well as how it embraces the sociological determinants of mental health outcomes including lack of economic stability, substance abuse, and one’s own self-worth.
Two quotations, one from a male and a female survivor, give hope during this holiday season, when abuse seems to heighten:
You survived the abuse. You’re gonna survive the recovery.
You are not the darkness you endured. You are the light that refused to surrender.
**Call 911 when in danger. Contact My Sister’s Place/My Safe Place, Lincoln County, for help: (541) 574-9424; Crisis Hotline: (541) 994-5959**
+–+
Early Roots
Oh, it starts with the parents of the parents. That is for sure. So, my Quebec friend, her own mother’s life in a small town near Montreal, or somewhere, involved brothers. Four brothers sexually assaulting her. Imagine that. And then, years later, a niece — daughter of one of those brothers — doing the same to his daughter, and alas, the mother of my friend, we’ll call my 38 year old friend, Domineque, went to court, had her niece file charges, and then, the old man after months of trials and tribulations, was found guilty of child abuse. That 30 year old niece, the day after the guilty verdict — not really justice served — died of a drug overdose.
My friend’s parents, let’s say, Cindi and Clement, married as sweethearts, at the age of 16. The old man, Clement, he was a motorcycle mechanic, then car mechanic and then car salesman. The two of them had two daughters, my friend Domineque and her sister Julia, let’s call her.
Parents who bought an old home and remodeled it and fixed it up. My friend and sister learned the skills of doing that sort of house fixing, and her mother was all hands on deck too. I have seen photos of the place outside Montreal. Upstairs and downstairs, two suites.
I have this friend’s story pretty complete, certainly from the start of when Domineque met this guy, let’s call him Daniel. Met in Guatemala, where she was running a cool eatery in Antigua. The guy was another traveling dude, drinking and living off of his old man’s inheritence.
All stories begin in the womb and before conception, for sure. We call this epigenetics, and cultural and family histories. How your DNA runs and develops, well, think grandparents and beyond.
This paper reviews the research evidence concerning the intergenerational transmission of trauma effects and the possible role of epigenetic mechanisms in this transmission. Two broad categories of epigenetically mediated effects are highlighted. The first involves developmentally programmed effects. These can result from the influence of the offspring’s early environmental exposures, including postnatal maternal care as well as in utero exposure reflecting maternal stress during pregnancy. The second includes epigenetic changes associated with a preconception trauma in parents that may affect the germline, and impact fetoplacental interactions. Several factors, such as sex‐specific epigenetic effects following trauma exposure and parental developmental stage at the time of exposure, explain different effects of maternal and paternal trauma. The most compelling work to date has been done in animal models, where the opportunity for controlled designs enables clear interpretations of transmissible effects. Given the paucity of human studies and the methodological challenges in conducting such studies, it is not possible to attribute intergenerational effects in humans to a single set of biological or other determinants at this time. Elucidating the role of epigenetic mechanisms in intergenerational effects through prospective, multi‐generational studies may ultimately yield a cogent understanding of how individual, cultural and societal experiences permeate our biology. (source)
So, the story is that hypervigilance, and how the brain is rewired just in the uterus is pretty complicated. Also, nurture — a household with parents that have lived through their own trauma — think of my friend’s mother raped by four brothers, and what was that household like; i.e., father, mother, discipline, projection of parents’ failings onto their offspring, etc.
This can get really deep, and, of course, my friend has never had real emotional and spiritual roadwork on her life’s stressors during her formative years, let alone through five years of this domestic violence-abuse-denigrating period.
In a nutshell, my friend was treated as overly dramatic, and terms like “you are crazy . . . you are over dramatic . . . you are over-sensitive” are also part of her early life. She was put into a mental institution, against her will, when she was in her teens, in Quebec. That in itself is early trauma. Then, she wanted a bit of freedom and wanted to live with her sister for a while, and parents basically said, “If you go to her and live with her, do not expect to come back.”
We know this is not how to treat youth. We know that provincial folk in a small town near Montreal can bring with them some retrograde ideas of what it means to raise two daughters. Both daughters struggled with weight gain, and there is super anxiety with her older sister.
My friend decided to travel. She ended up going to Mexico and Central America, Dominican Republic and elsewhere. A good friend in DR, working for an NGO, well, that was also a bright spot in her life. My friend ended up in Guatemala, opened up a breakfast place that was so popular she expanded it.
She met this fellow, Daniel, who was kicking around Guatemala. There are many expatriates who are cultural leeches, leaving their own rotten lives behind, or running away from their own dead mentality. Lording over the lesser people, the brown people, these people bring with them toxins.
As all abusers start off, they can rope in people. My friend, Domineque, was dynamic, well known, outgoing, and this guy just did his ugly charm of tall and handsome and confident.
Of course, I know about other relationships my friend had, and they were abusive in some ways. This is the reality of epigenetics and family (early childhood) dynamics. It gets complicated.
Guatemala is generally a sexist society, and when I was there and when she was there, seeing 15 year old girls with a baby on their back, we know that that child is the product of rape, family rape, brother or father.
Think about that? This karma, man, this background energy, negative energy, with these Europeans and Americans and Canadians down there to drink cheap, eat cheap, play the hippie or post-hippie game of cultural appropriation. Many bring bucks, so when you go to these towns, you see lots of eateries and bars and businesses owned by expats.
The Great Santini
In his new memoir, The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son, Pat Conroy confesses, “I hated my father long before I knew there was a word for hate.”
Donald Conroy, a highly decorated Marine pilot who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, lived by a warrior’s code. His son says, “Dad’s job description was to kill our nation’s enemies, and nothing in his job hinted at any obligation to be a good father or husband.”
Now, 15 years after his father’s death, Conroy, who turns 68 on Saturday, is asked if he misses him.
“A great deal,” he says with a crooked smile. ”I miss how we argued and fought. I miss his total lack of modesty. I miss how, despite everything, he could make me laugh.” (2013, source)
Here, this Daniel’s old man was an air force pilot. Then a commercial airline pilot. Two sons, and he was already forcing them to do shots of hard booze at age 13. He was mean, a cheat, conservative, and hateful toward women, and he ended up being killed by a girlfriend after years of divorce separation from Daniel’s mother. Daniel and his brother hate their mother, hate women, and here we are — young guy with hundreds of thousands of dollars in inheritance-life insurance.
This Daniel went to school at ASU, was a drinker, got hurt so his footballing ended, and there you have his life — a dad who beat him, who even used a BB gun as a game to shoot both sons. Hate, booze, bad mother, bad dad, a family of lies and hidden truths, and an old man who got stabbed to death by a girlfriend who he abused.
All of this — and again, it’s complicated how the bad dad and the bad mother and the extended family (where the hell are grandparents and aunts and uncles?) can course through the cortex of a developing brain. The cycle of abuse, you’ve all heard. You bet we can drill down and figure out why Biden and Trump and Blinken and Obama and Clinton and et al are so bad, so hateful, so misogyny, so slick, so blunt and borish and dangerous to the world. As an activist and socialist-communist, I can’t spend a lot of mental space forgiving the monsters of the world because of their epigenetics and family dynamics and early childhood adverse experiences.
Read Pat Conroy, here:
Conroy, the oldest of seven kids, says his father was actually worse than the fictional and tyrannical Col. Bull Meecham.
But a strange thing happened after the novel became a movie starring Robert Duvall.
“My dad, always in denial, treated it all as fiction, like I had made it all up, not toned it down. To prove that, he reinvented himself. After my mother divorced him (in 1975) he had the best second act I ever saw. He became the best uncle, the best brother, the best grandfather, the best friend.”
[…]
After two divorces, Conroy’s third wife, novelist Cassandra King, “got him “to clean up my life,” as he puts it. “Eat better and stop drinking.”
He’s still hefty, with rosy cheeks, deep blue eyes and a hearty laugh. He married King a week after his father’s death in 1998, and credits her for “a long repair job on the shape and architecture of a troubled soul.”
In his memoir, Conroy writes, “I don’t believe in happy families.” One of his siblings committed suicide. Four others, including himself, have been suicidal at one time or another, he reports. And he’s estranged from his 31-year-old daughter, Susannah, who’s mentioned in his acknowledgments with an invitation: “The door is always open and so is my heart.”
But what if he had a happier childhood? Would he still have become a writer?
“I hope so,” he says. When he talks to writing students, “some seem to envy me, that I had a terrible dad and this ridiculous family that gave me so much to write about.”
He tells them, “Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.”
Had he grown up happier, “I probably would be a different writer, maybe a kind of sun-struck Florida novelist like Carl Hiaasen, who’s so hilarious.” (source)
Who Are We?
Hey, I’m not perfect. I was a perfectionist, highly engaged political, highly aggressive as an activist and college teacher. I was writing a lot, and my daughter paid the price for my exposing her to really adult topics of war, ecological destruction, and my own failings in a capitalist society to learn how to play well in the normals’ sandbox, how to keep my mouth zipped if I was around ideas that were harmful or wrong, and that has had a lasting and epigenetic effect on my daughter who is in her 26th year. Divorce didn’t help, and she was bullied in school, and I didn’t know that was the case. Her journey is hers to tell, so I’ll stop there. She is an empath, supersensitive and working with counselors.
Oh, we need deep reflection on why women have been subject to so much hate, so much sexualization, so much Weinstein and Epstein sickness. So much trafficking. Old work:
Violence Against Women, Definition:
“Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts,
coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life” DEVW (UN General Assembly in its resolution 48/104 of 20 December 1993)
Accordingly, violence against women encompasses but is not limited to the following:
(a) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation; (b) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution; (c) Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs.
This is the background fodder for males like Daniel to believe he is above and beyond all laws of nature and ethics and emotional connection to fellow humans. TV, sports, power structures, SCOTUS, or any of them: Texas? All of them, subhumans, and I was in Texas teaching and reporting when this piece of human stain was running for governor!
This is the old adage — you are what you hear, see, do, read, watch, learn, dream of, believe, hold true, deeply wish for. The opposite, too — you are what you DON’T hear, see, do, read, watch, learn, dream of, believe, hold true, deeply wish for. Over time, this all plays out in so many ways — in the sand box, playground, classroom. Ophelia Syndrome anyone?
I have a friend who is fond of saying, “If we both think the same way, one of us is unnecessary.” The clone, the chameleon personality is the Ophelia Syndrome in another form. One reading of Ophelia’s suicide later in Hamlet suggests that because she has no thoughts of her own, because she has listened only to the contradictory voices of the men around her — Laertes, Polonius, and Hamlet –she reaches a breaking point. They have all used her: “She is only valued for the roles that further other people’s plots. Treated as a helpless child, she finally becomes one . . . . Her childishness is just a step along the regression to suicide, a natural, if not logical solution to her dependence on conflicting authorities.
The Ophelia Syndrome manifests itself in universities. The Ophelia (substitute a male name, if you choose) writes copious notes in every class and memorizes them for examinations. The Polonius writes examination questions that address just what was covered in the textbook or lectures. The Ophelia wants to know exactly what the topic for a paper should be. The Polonius prescribes it. The Ophelia wants to be a parrot, because it feels safe. The Polonius enjoys making parrot cages. In the end, the Ophelia becomes the clone of the Polonius, and one of them is unnecessary. I worry often that universities may be rendering their most serious students, those who have been “good” all their lives, vulnerable to the Ophelia Syndrome rather than motivating them to individuation. (source)
So much in society that splays women into roles that they should not be put into. It is difficult to rise above society, and in many ways, the women that want power become the women that want to be like men. Feminism is a fight against war, capitalism, and we can see how messed up today we have war mongers of all LGBTQA persuasions.
Feminism is a global cry that offers us a roadmap in which “we” means all women and “all women” is what provides us answers. Facing the “us first” of those who advocate for the criminal alliance between capitalism, patriarchy, and imperialism, we say “us, together.” For this reason, women from all parts of the world have taken to the streets to make this purple horizon visible, in which we struggle for peace in Ukraine, which in turn means dismantling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Regarding this “all,” we do not forget anyone. We also struggle with the Sahrawi women against the murderous regime of Mohammed VI of Morocco and his alliance with Europe. We struggle with Palestinian women against Israel’s Washington-funded apartheid to control a region of the world that has not been allowed to decide their own fate. With Yemen, with Sahel, with all places around the world, we as women know that now, right now, when everything is being fragmented, divided, polarized, simplified, and forgotten, we must pause, reflect, and provide a collective response: a feminist agenda for peace. Because yes, we knew how to achieve hegemony, and yes, we can create a new framework in face of neoliberalism.
We must situate our view of the world, which expands analyses, builds alliances, and creates processes of cooperation, solidarity, and mutual support, always looking at those who suffer, who are exploited, oppressed, and rendered invisible. This is also why, while the war summit is organized in my town, Madrid, we are organizing the Peace Summit “No To NATO.” (“Feminism Is a Global Cry Against War “. . . . Nora García on the role of feminism in building anti-capitalist peace)
To be honest intimate partner violence stems from the sickness of capitalism (I’m looking at it now from a capitalist country, and not denying all the ugliness of honor killings and acid thrown on women and all the violence of the Taliban sorts). Garcia is so right: “And we say: never again peace between the classes and war between the peoples. We will cry again together: peace between the peoples, war between the classes!”
In one sense my friend Domineque’s husband is a product of toxic male machoism, product of a monster of a military dad, product of a mother who decided money and homes were worth her own sacrifice, and I do not know this Daniel’s mother’s background, though I have talked to her on an earlier escape from Daniel by my friend, and she admitted her son was an alcoholic, and she even footed the bill for my friend (her daughter-in-law) to get her and her dog out of Oregon, with the rental car, and such.
Now, though, this same mother-in-law rushed to Oregon from Colorado, and the first thing she did upon arrive 3.5 hours later from Portland in her rental car was to go to her daughter-in-law who is in the house they shared, and demanded her son’s wallet, phone, passport and personal belongings. He’s got a restraining order on him, and that includes violating it by contacting ANYONE to confront my friend Domineque.
This woman is in her 60s, and she took time off her high school teaching job to do what? I did not see her at her son’s arraignment where the ADA read off the charges, and then a long list of prior criminality, dating back to 2003, to include assault, DUI, and another domestic violence case. She wasn’t there to see her pathetic son on Zoom listen to the next court date. And, the ADA also mentioned this guy’s phone calls in jail, to include telling a friend to go to his wife’s house to get his passport and cell phone, and he also in another phone call told someone he wasn’t going to prison, that he would run, and then, of course, the call to mama to harass his wife, her daughter-in-law.
This retrograde woman, his mother, it’s as if she’s throwing acid on all women:
[NEW DELHI, INDIA – JULY 30: Laxmi Aggarwal (23), and Nasreen (one name, 33) in the balcony of the new campaign office Stop Acid Attacks in New Delhi. Aggarwal was only 16 when a man threw acid on her face and hands for refusing his proposal. She remained hidden behind the veil for many years. But this year, buoyed by the anti-rape protests and a new law against acid attacks, Aggarwal found the courage to come out and join the campaign. Since then she has become a sort of the poster-child of the campaign against acid attacks. For the first time, India established specific penalties for the crime, and now the Supreme Court directed the government two weeks ago to regulate acid sales and award quick money for medical treatment for the survivors. Not to lose on the momentum generated by the anti-rape activism and the new law, acid attack survivors are now coming together to push the government to enforce the court’s orders, demand rehabilitation and planning street plays to raise awareness about the prevalence of the crime in Indian cities. ‘It is very important to show the face, people should see the horror. Hiding the face is the same as staying silent,’ Aggarwal said. (Photo by Rama Lakshmi/The Washington Post via Getty Images)] (source)
There are heroes, and they are in danger, for defending the LAND, the next and next and next generation:
In this context, women defenders are perceived as a threat because they question and jeopardize the power structures that are based on class privileges and gender discrimination. Moreover, they routinely and clearly denounce just how harmful it is for humanity to continue supporting a system that permanently exploits life on the planet. These women are the victims that most suffer the consequences of the loss of access to land and natural resources.
In addition to the risk that women defending the rights of the land, the territories and the environment have to face, they also have to withstand the difficulties derived from living in rural areas, from belonging to farming communities, from being afro-descendants or indigenous, from being women or from their sexual orientation or diverse gender identity. (“Women defenders of the land and the environment: silenced voices”)
All of this, believe it or not, gives males their entitlement, their self-absorbed resentment, their hate of women, therefore their hate for mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, grandmothers.
We as women are always in this work, staying active, even though many want to put out the flame that we have inside us. But we are always giving a little bit more firewood so that the flame stays active. Despite the struggles, there is always a woman there supporting the cause.Maria Magdalena Cuc Choc
It’s appalling to see women go against their own gender, but that is the way of money, power, twisted capitalism, and xenophobia. This anti-feminism from women, well, part of the brainwashing and stupidity of humanity, at the expense of fighting for common cause:
The categories for why these women reject feminism are as follows, in order from most commonly written about reason for rejecting feminism to the least, and further explained:
Equality for all
a. Any comment made by a woman that deems feminism unfit because it
b. doesn’t give equality to all
c. Women shouldn’t get more rights or get away with more than men, that is not
equality
d. Example: “Equality does not equal superiority.” (Post-31)
Enjoys being a mother and a wife
a. Any comment made by a woman that states she doesn’t need or want feminism
because she enjoys being a mother and a wife and that feminism doesn’t agree
with this lifestyle
b. Any comment that refers to their male significant other loving them and treating
them right so they don’t need feminism
c. Example: “Being a wife and mother is the greatest source of joy in my life.”
(Post-2)
In favor of men or looking from a man’s point of view/feminism is only for women
a. Any comment that advocates for the male, trying to prove that men are important
because they believe feminists hate men/ Any comment that states that feminism
only fights for women’s rights, and ignores men’s rights
b. Example: “I love men and value their human rights.” (Post-37).
c. Example: “Focusing on only women will never bring equality.” (Post-20).
Femininity
a. Any comment in which the woman states that she enjoys being feminine, and
believes feminism doesn’t agree with femininity
b. Example: “I like to be treated like a lady by a gentleman.” (Post-52)
I am not a victim/I am not oppressed
a. Any comment by a woman that states feminism makes women into victims, and
they don’t feel victimized/Any comment by a woman that states feminism tries to
fight for women who are oppressed but isn’t helping or they aren’t feeling
oppressed
b. Example: “I am not a ‘victim’ there is no war against me.” (Post-140)
c. “We don’t need feminism because oppression is universal and has far more to do
with how wealthy your parents are rather than whether or not you have a Y
chromosome.” (Post-33).
I am too self-confident and responsible of my actions
a. Any comment made by a woman that states that a woman rejects feminism
because she doesn’t need an excuse or wants to shift blame on anyone else and
believes that’s what feminism does
b. Example: “I don’t need feminism b/c I can take responsibility for my insecurities
and I don’t need to blame other people for my problems!” (Post-119)
Feminist groups are a negative group
a. Any comment that suggests they don’t need feminism because it is a very
negative group (angry women, misogynists, a cult, etc.)
b. “Feminist culture has become cannibalistic….a cult rejecting free-thinking.”
(Post-44).
There is a significant difference between men and women we must acknowledge
a. Any comment that states women and men are treated differently because they are
different and we must accept and embrace that and feminism doesn’t
b. “Men and women are inherently different, and that’s great!” (Post-17)
My future or current children won’t need feminism/I won’t teach it to them
a. Any comment in which the woman doesn’t believe that feminism will be useful
for her children in the future
b. “I don’t need feminism because I want my boys to grow up knowing what TRUE
equality is.” (Post-26)
Rape related issue
a. Any comment that claims feminism tries to shift the blame in a situation
involving rape
b. Example: “My rapist was a woman!” (Post-8)
I am against modern feminism
a. Any comment where a woman states that she doesn’t need modern feminism in
her life specifically for various reasons
b. “I don’t need modern ‘feminism’ because I don’t need others to fight my battles
for me.” (Post-116). (Women Against Feminism — a study of comments on one website)
Call the Midwife, err, Cheerleaders/Bombardiers — How Bad is this so-called awake culture, dynamic, grand exceptional culture of Manifest Destiny and Monroe Doctrine has a million threadbare elements to its so-called great democracy (not)? Again, the sickness of Empire, 2022:
[President Donald Trump shakes hands with Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson as Chief Test Pilot Alan B. Norman watches during an event in July at the White House. Hewson is one of four women to serve atop four of the nation’s five largest defense — offensive murder incorporated contractors. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images]
So, with ALL of this and more, the child is raised into a hell of a rotten man. Not just talking Trump or Biden, but this Arizona Daniel. He has grandparents in New Jersey who do not know his rap sheet. He has charmed men and women into believing he’s just a regular guy, travel loving guy, builds houses, uses people to help him build houses. There is a dark side, yep. Wasn’t it that creep of a subhuman, Jordan Peterson, who said what? Canadian psychologist who gets endless copy and money for speaking? This is one warped guy, but not unusual: Jordan Peterson thinks there is ‘a bit of Hitler in everyone’ Now, the flipside is that he was questioned by another false journalist trying to say Putin is a Hitler. Amazing, no, how turned around the world has become in a few months.
I would say most women in the world want clean air, water, soil, families, and children. They do not want war, and they did not want constant bombing from the Nazi’s in Urkaine, and then this effete guy, Zelenksy, running around like some Academy Award-Emmy Award splat lying and conniving. AHH, Putin just spoke with the mothers, man:
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a personal meeting on Friday with the mothers of Russian soldiers. He said that the country’s leadership, and he personally, regards their sons as heroes.
Putin revealed that he proposed the meeting with the mothers of soldiers because he wanted to hear their opinions, their firsthand experiences and information they have received from the frontlines. “A lot of information comes to me from various sources, but your assessments, your opinions, ideas and suggestions – that’s a completely different matter,” Putin said, adding that he will try to make sure that everything discussed during the meeting is taken into account and used in real life “to the maximum.”
It’s an aside, but really, this country is insane, both Pelosi or Schumer, and the women wearing that Blue and Yellow are supporting Nazism. Here, a different take on Putin talking to the mothers:
It’s all very complicated, how misanthropic and misogynistic this world is. And, a great book, by Linda G. Ford, on the maltreatment of women radicals/politicals.
In The Eye of the Beholder: USA History of Imprisoning Women Politicals
Part One of review and discussion of Linda G. Ford’s Women Politicals in America: Jailed Dissenters from Mother Jones to Lynne Stewart
Long Live the Armed Struggle!
Part Two of book review, and … The Revolution Will Not Be Televised or plugged onto Twitter, or in the Streets with Your Placards, or Sending in ‘Save the Whale’ Postcards
[The Night of Terror: When Suffragists Were Imprisoned and Tortured in 1917: After peacefully demonstrating in front of the White House, 33 women endured a night of brutal beatings.]
It all matters, and so, 2022, November, she calls the cops after the guy she’s been married to for 5 years grabbed her hair, her throat, used a pillow to attempt suffocation, and threw he down — face down — for more suffocation. She has it on cell phone video, and she called the cops from a neighbor’s since he tossed her phone into a half acre of blackberry bushes. He locked her and the dog out of the house. She got the deputies there. They were in the front and the back. They knocked on the door, he opened it, then shut and locked it. They had to call a DA for a search warrant, and two hours later, they got into the house, and he locked himself into the bedroom, and they asked him to open up. They kicked in the door. He struggled. He told them it was an illegal search warrant.
All of this has those years of back and forth, leaving for a few weeks to Canada, or, to a hotel, but always returning. She was isolated, and he had the truck in his name, the house, and they did not share a bank account. Why? Why didn’t she leave? Brain rewiring, upbringing, and so much more.
One of the questions we hear time and time again is “Why doesn’t she just leave?” (source)
We need to stop blaming survivors for staying and start supporting them to enable them to leave. By understanding the many barriers that stand in the way of a woman leaving an abusive relationship – be it psychological, emotional, financial or physical threats – we can begin to support and empower women to make the best decision for them while holding abusers solely accountable for their behaviour. Here are just a few of the reasons that prevent a woman leaving:
Danger and fear; Isolation; Shame, embarrassment or denial; Trauma and low confidence; Practical reasons; The support isn’t there when they need it! This is a good article on the why’s: “The Dirty Secrets About Why Women Don’t Leave Abusive Relationships: This is why we have an epidemic of domestic violence” by Michelle Jaqua
Sure, you get the Psychology Today story: “Common Reactions of the Brain to an Abuser”
Several important ingredients that contribute to someone’s “addiction” to their abuser are oxytocin (bonding), endogenous opioids (pleasure, pain, withdrawal, dependence), corticotropin-releasing factor (withdrawal, stress), and dopamine (craving, seeking, wanting). With such strong neurochemistry in dysregulated states, it will be extremely difficult to manage emotions or make logical decisions.
None of this makes any sense, since we are limited creatures in this Disneyfied and Infantilized culture. But throughout Catholic Societies, throughout so many cultures over time, women have been attacked, forbidden, foreclosed, imprisoned, limited, held back, held down and raped, assaulted, murdered. Nothing those of us in the main can tell themselves that sometimes there are many grays to a theory, and that counterintuitive arguments are absolutely necessary to understand this toxic relationship scenario. Lots of articles on how the brain is wired and responds to stress: “Cultural Differences in the Impact of Social Support on Psychological and Biological Stress Responses”
Social support, not just family and friends, is the key to why there are so many breakdowns in women wanting out but not finding the mettle to get out. Most domestic violence cases get thrown out of court, we have to remember. We have so much animosity for those who are willing to go against powerful men, as we see in the #MeToo movement, and so much more.
It does drill down into the brain of a girl from Quebec, no matter how much chutzpah she had as a youngster. People are targeted every day by schemers, by bilking artists, by thieves, systems of oppression, by so many in this dog-eat-dog society. So a woman in an abusive relationship is facing so much culturally, and, to be honest, the brain is just so rewired to process all those hormones and chemicals a certain way. Glutton for punishment may sound cool when it’s a workout fiend or weightlifter or marathoner, but there are many chemical markers that keep people in dangerous and retrograde and addictive situations.
I could go on with this story: She’s got victims assistance folk helping. Even people I introduce her to in the co-op give her hugs. The nurses at the hospital. In the DA’s office. She has female Assistant DA, female judges and now a female lawyer for the divorce. She has found out other things about this guy, and she is still reeling from how she ended up with someone she didn’t know. He cheated on her, and his big deal now is getting the house into his mom’s name. He is up for $750,00 security bond, and even his public defender is female. My friend has been hugged by many females. She’s been to one domestive violence support group. This is an uphill battle, but her mother is now on board, not blaming her, not telling her to just leave and go back to Quebec. Her sister has come around. Her old man, I have spent time with, and my own modeling of support and in-your-face advocacy is showing him that people care about his daughter. I didn’t know her before February 2022. My own spouse said, “Well, she reached out to you, so now you are responsible for how to help her.”
Every day is a new day. He will be served divorce papers in jail. She is selling tools and toys of his to raise money for the attorney’s retainer — $2500. Everywhere she goes she hears of a story after a story of women who also were in abusive situations. Ten years, 20 years, with kids. Luckily, there are no children involved. She has lost 5 years of her life, but she is strong.
As I say, she’s had an interesting and dynamic and traveling life. But her story is hers to tell. Through her eyes. Through all the calluses on her soul, heart, feet. She wants to write a haunted house on the beach story, and she should write it, and her memoir! The next few weeks, with plea bargains, with the bs of divorce, and property (he’s controlled all the money and deeds to the house), well, it’s a fragile time and powerful time too. She loves this neck of the woods/world, but the associations with this criminal man, this abuser, well, and the house they have, she’ll never be able to buy out his share, and, housing here sucks. Her life is one of outdoor security cameras, flinching at every branch outside cracking (deer) and door jams and so much more.
She reads the articles, This is March 2022. May the judges all die early deaths: “She said her husband was abusive. A judge took away her kids and ordered her arrest.”
The judge in Julie Valadez’s custody case found her disruptive, questioned her credibility and put out a warrant for her arrest. A rare appellate victory is now giving her case a fresh look, but Valadez still is fighting for her four children. (Wisconsin).
And, ending on a good note would be myself putting my reputation and lived experiences and radical communism on the line.
“The Court does not find credible Ms. Valadez’s other allegations of abuse and battery, including uncorroborated allegations of sexual abuse, physical abuse, stalking and property damage,” Michael J. Aprahamian concluded.
The judge acknowledged that Ricardo Valadez, whom he described as an alcoholic, had lied to the court about his sobriety. Still, he wrote, “As a general matter, the Court found Ms. Valadez not credible.”
We are counting on a different outcome since thus far all the people involved court wise, DA wise, Judge wise, have been wise, empathetic and aware of the cycle of abuse and the reality of murder in the first degree if guys like this get out . . . . He’s already stalked a fiance in 2010. Rich parents, and they picked up and left without a trace.
Below, for the local newspaper, the Newport News Times. (without the images, etc.) Below that, more on this reprehensible genocidal black death Black Friday day!
The First No-Thanks Thanksgiving
Trigger Warning (noun): a statement at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc., alerting the reader or viewer to the fact that it contains potentially distressing material
This hoopla around Turkey Day — this so-called Big Box Store Shuffle and Great American Pig-out Thanksgiving — is a National Day of Mourning.
I was not my history teacher’s favorite student in high school when I wrote essays on my country’s hypocrisy of football, apple pie and Thanksgiving while never facing the genocide against the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. I was called a traitor, self-loathing white and un-American when I pointed out the war against the “Indians” didn’t officially end until 1924, more than thirty years after the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890).
When I was teaching in El Paso, I got mired in a push to commemorate the “first” thanksgiving here, in Paseo del Norte. El Paso laid claim to the first undocumented/illegal settlement in North America in the form of Conquistadors and Friars.
In 1598 the Spanish explorer, Don Juan de Oñate, and his army established the first European colony in North America. The settlement was located at San Gabriel near Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, 30 miles north of Santa Fe.
I’ve been there, and the double-edge sword of breaking bread and pavo (turkey) with the Spanish interlopers is quaint for the people of El Paso looking for tourism bucks.
However, like the Plymouth Rock celebration of 1621, this Texas one represents a foreboding of genocide. I’ve been to that “celebration.” This El Paso organization declared this first Thanksgiving took place, near San Elizario, Texas. Oñate and his battalion of soldiers, Franciscan missionaries and colonists, celebrated their safe arrival on April 30, 1598.
That same year, the Spanish colonial governor de Oñate put 507 Acoma on trial. Women between 12 and 25 were enslaved for 20 years at the Pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh. Men over age of 25 had one foot cut off, and younger men were enslaved for 20 years. Oñate was later tried for excessive cruelty.
Switching to my Canadian roots, I absorbed more revised history. As a kid, I learned of that country’s treatment of Indigenous peoples since my mother was a journalist in Vancouver who reported on stories about Canada’s maltreatment of their First Nations. On September 30, 2021 Canada established a statutory holiday observation of Orange Shirt Day. This is a remembrance of missing and murdered children from residential schools as well as a process of healing for survivors.
It’s sort of a truth and reconciliation moment to raise consciousness about the residential school system and its impact on Indigenous communities for over a century. Hundreds of children were buried in unmarked graves at just one residential site, where my sister lived, Kamloops, BC. Thousands of other graves are located throughout Canada.
Then, in my Arizona high school days, I was “adopted” by some Apache friends and their families. Starting then – as their aunties and uncles were active in the American Indian Movement and Red Nation – I’d been to various events decrying the Plymouth Rock myth. For me, since age 15, Thanksgiving has been a Day of Mourning for Indigenous Peoples who were devastated by settler colonialism and imperialism.
The National Day of Mourning protest was founded by Wamsutta Frank James, an Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal member, and other Indigenous men and women. In 1970, Wamsutta had been invited by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to speak at a banquet commemorating the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims. The organizers of the banquet thought Wamsutta might deliver an honorific tribute singing the praises of the American settler colonial project. He was not about to “thanks” the Pilgrims for bringing “civilization” to the Wampanoag.
The speech that Wamsutta wrote, which was based on historical fact instead of the hollow fiction, portrayed in the Thanksgiving myth asked fundamental questions: What are the foundational myths of the United States? Who created them and who is erased and harmed?
He detailed how the English before 1620 brought diseases that caused a “Great Dying.” They took Wampanoag people captive, selling them as slaves in Europe for 220 shillings apiece. The Pilgrims robbed Wampanoag graves immediately upon landing in Massachusetts. Yes, there was a meal provided largely by the Wampanoag in 1621, but it was not a “thanksgiving.” Rather, the first official “thanksgiving” (not including the San Elizario one) was declared by the Puritans (not the Pilgrims) in 1637 to celebrate massacring hundreds of Pequot men, women and children on the banks of the Mystic River in Connecticut.
When the organizers of the celebration read the speech, they suppressed it. One of the more powerful messages in it was a collective message of Native American pride: “Our spirit refuses to die,” wrote Wamsutta. “Yesterday we walked the woodland paths and sandy trails. Today we must walk the macadam highways and roads. We are uniting… We stand tall and proud, and before too many moons pass we’ll right the wrongs we have allowed to happen to us.” (RIP, James, an elder of great weight)
Much of these histories – massacres of women and children, the enslavement of men, the amputation of feet, and the death of children ripped from families and forced into these “schools” – cannot be taught in K12, as there are no “trigger warnings” strong enough to “protect” youth from the truth. I’ve had young people complain to administrators for the negative and horrific stories a substitute brings to the high school class.
Going back to mythologies and Disneyfied presentations of history is not just retrograde; it’s dangerous. Having faculty like myself being charged with “teaching anti-white critical race theory junk” is also McCarthyite.
Thank goodness for some of my activist friends in El Paso who years ago did some statue editing: they chopped off the bronze foot of Don Onate as he is poised on a Spanish steed high above his slaves. The foot has never been found.
Part Two
Amazing curriculum,
The revised edition of Native People of Wisconsin introduces students to the historical background, cultural traditions, and treaties negotiated by the eleven federally-recognized Indian Nations in the state today, the Brothertown Indians, a group still waiting to regain federal recognition, and urban Indians. This is serious material, the only mandated subject in social studies instruction in Wisconsin.
Author Patty Loew is a member of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Ojibwe Nation, who based Native People of Wisconsin on the research done for Indian Nations of Wisconsin, now in its second edition, which is written for a general audience. She strongly feels the responsibility to help students gain knowledge of Indian Country from a Native perspective and from the perspective of each major tribal group represented in Wisconsin’s current population.
The authors of this accompanying teacher’s guide want you to feel confident and comfortable teaching about Native people even if you don’t have much firsthand knowledge. Of course, you and your students have been inundated with images of Indian people, and it’s important that you help your students separate the reality from the stereotypical or mythical, positive and negative. We are happy to direct instructors to real stories from Native communities in videos produced by The Ways: Stories on Culture and Language from Native Communities Around the Central Great Lakes. This online educational resource is a production of Wisconsin Media Lab. The videos are integrated into many of the activities we’ve included and are linked to their corresponding activities in the Table of Contents. Educators may use this video content in conjunction with these Student Activities: Learning from My Elders; Food That Grows on the Water; Oneida Language & Culture; Boarding Schools; Native Songs and Dances (source)
Yet, if this post were to be read by the same people reading my short piece, the one above, with the post’s title, “The First No-Thanks Thanksgiving,” which I hope will appear in the Newport News Times, what kind of backlash would I receive?
Tons of writers or bots or both calling me a kook or loony or anti-business or self-hating when I weigh in on various alternative news sites.
Bottom line is we need more nuance, more critical thinking, and more people who can be counter-intuitive and have several theses, sometimes contradictory, while holding onto strong ethical frame works. I can be for the Declaration of Human Rights, a la United Nations, but I can also be opposed to many of the UN’s programs, people, representatives.
I can see the amazing forward thinking of say The Earth Charter, but I can also think hard about systems, how we need more than a charter, and we need true communism with people power, planet power, thinking and acting globally but also living and organizing and doing locally and regionally.
We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.
Alas, though, any sort of collective and creative and earth and people centric thinking will be attacked. Any thinking around just what happened to Native Americans over the course of almost 600 years, that is not heretical.
Just what was that Union Pacific Railroad all about? Mr. Durant, getting how many millions of acres for that transcontinental feat? How many millions of buffalo slaughtered — “shot from the comfort of your railcar” Indian Killing, err, Buffalo Killing, trips?
The telegram arrived in New York from Promontory Summit, Utah, at 3:05 p.m. on May 10, 1869, announcing one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of the century:
The last rail is laid; the last spike driven; the Pacific Railroad is completed. The point of junction is 1086 miles west of the Missouri river and 690 miles east of Sacramento City.
The telegram was signed, “Leland Stanford, Central Pacific Railroad. T. P. Durant, Sidney Dillon, John Duff, Union Pacific Railroad,” and trumpeted news of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. After more than six years of backbreaking labor, east officially met west with the driving of a ceremonial golden spike. In City Hall Park in Manhattan, the announcement was greeted with the firing of 100 guns. Bells were rung across the country, from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. Business was suspended in Chicago as people rushed to the streets, celebrating to the sounding of steam whistles and cannons booming.
Back in Utah, railroad officials and politicians posed for pictures aboard locomotives, shaking hands and breaking bottles of champagne on the engines as Chinese laborers from the West and Irish, German and Italian laborers from the East were budged from view. (source)
Oh, that was General Sheridan’s concept of Total War, which he utilized heading to Atlanta: three hundred miles of immolated towns, farms, livestock, crops, everything. He now was with President Grant attempting to take care of the “Indian Problem.” Imagine that, more than 120 years ago, utilizing the concept of destroying great people like the Lakota using psychology as a weapon.
Nearly every railroad train which leaves or arrives at Fort Hays on the Kansas Pacific Railroad has its race with these herds of buffalo; and a most interesting and exciting scene is the result. The train is “slowed” to a rate of speed about equal to that of the herd; the passengers get out fire-arms which are provided for the defense of the train against the Indians, and open from the windows and platforms of the cars a fire that resembles a brisk skirmish. Frequently a young bull will turn at bay for a moment. His exhibition of courage is generally his death-warrant, for the whole fire of the train is turned upon him, either killing him or some member of the herd in his immediate vicinity.
I just finished the eight-part series, The American West, a Robert Redford production. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Wyatt Earp, Custer. Durant is also a character in the dramatized documentary. Seeing John McCain yammering away about Indigenous peoples in this series takes some acid reflux pills, but then, Tom Selleck, and Kiefer Sutherland and Burt Reynolds?
What prompted you to explore the West in your latest series?
Stephen: We found that after the Civil War – the series focuses on the 25 years after the Civil War – the country was broken and divided, but 25 years later we wound up with this unified country with the same good-bad similarities going on throughout the country. Big business ran things. The American spirit that we have today came from this 25-year period. The lawman, the outlaws, the Army, the Native Americans – everything that was mixed up in this time period – contributed to who we are today.
Tell us what we can expect from the episodes.
Tim: You can expect an unknown story of the West and how the West was settled. It’s a lot of names that you know with a lot of unknown stories. You’ll see the way everything was connected and how the push West was shaped by the Civil War and the opportunity that was available. It’s a very personal story. It focuses on a group of people who aren’t necessarily directly connected, but the effect of what they do is seen throughout the West and how it is formed. There’s also focus on the Native Americans. It’s a mix of outlaws, politicians and Native Americans and the roles they played settling the West.
Yeah, I was a reporter in Tombstone, for the University of Arizona lab paper, The Tombstone Epitaph. I then was a graduated BA/BS working in Bisbee, Cochise County and along the border on both sides of the dividing line.
I was a reporter and teacher and activist in El Paso, and Las Cruces, and had tequila and empanadas on the grave of John Wesley Hardin in Concordia Cemetery.
In the mix, of course, with all these documentaries and dramas the Native Americans are either completely washed out of these stories, or set into a white man’s milieu. I’ve studied graduate courses on “planning in the West,” you know, urban and regional planning. Looking at the West as a unique place in the USA, with a large chunk of the planning course looking at water, Indian sovereignty, and more.
“One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”
Boom and bust, the West. In 2022, the West is all about sinking and shrinking waterways and reservoirs and fires and population influxes and the same snake oil salesmen I ran into in Tucson and throughout Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas.
I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in his sight. It is not necessary for Eagles to be Crows.
–Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Lakota chief. God Is Red: A Native View of Religion by Vine Deloria
They want us to give up another chunk of our tribal land. This is not the first time or the last time. They will again try to gain possession of the last piece of ground we possess.
The celebration was lively: in the small town of Waldport, Oregon, a few hundred finally gathered to see the statue’s unveiling. We heard a Gulf Coast guy, Truman Price, a violinist, play music on his fiddle reminiscent of the tunes of 1880s which would have been played by the historical person cast in bronze. A sculptor showed up, Peter Helzer, and his daughter, too, who was on the banjo with Truman and another fellow playing guitar. The story is of a slave, brought to Oregon by his “owner,” James Southworth. Oh, those Oregon Black Exclusion laws initiated in 1844, stating that any Black individuals or families attempting to settle here would be whipped 39 times, and repeated until they left. The Oregon Constitution in 1859 made it illegal for African Americans to live in Oregon. That law was repeated in 1926.
The state of Oregon, man, whew. When I was working in downtown Portland, two of my social services colleagues, both Black, said they had not seen the amount of racism in Portland compared to Texas and Georgia where they had came from. “It’s not overt, more like sort of hidden, but these white colleagues, liberals, they say some pretty racist stuff to say, profess. They might think it’s passive bigotry, but the state’s history, the sundown laws, and the racist cops and sheriff departments all speak to me as a black man who is definitely feeling the racism.”
So, Louis Southworth was sent to the Nevada and California gold fields in the 1870s by his enslaver, and he came back with money he saved from work, but mostly from entertaining camps with his fiddle. He bought his freedom at age 28, lived in Buena Vista, did blacksmith work while learning how to read and write.
He came out to this area, Oregon, on the Pacific, Alsea, homesteading with his wife; about five miles up the river from Waldport.
He ran a ferry, moving people, hay and other cargo. He ended up chair of the school board, and donated land for the schoolhouse and still played his fiddle.
So, 2022, November 19, the fun was had by all, and there is land dedicated to a Southworth Park, and the statue will be placed there, and there will be more ceremonies. The donated land Southworth gave for the first schoolhouse is now a field where the park will be built, named after him, with the statue.
I have the text of the dedicatory remarks made by an African American, Zachary Stocks, who is executive director of Oregon Black Pioneers. He set the record straight on the life and times of not only Southworth, but how his story is that of all Blacks, then, and now. It is an odd thing that this town, which is partially built on burial grounds of the first people, Alsi (Salish folk), is putting up a statue of a Black American, who bought his freedom using the fiddle as his conduit to freedom.
There are no dedicatory memorials to the Siletz and Alsi. I’ve written about that before, and down at Devil’s Churn, there is a cemented-and-walled-in cave with a really hard-to-read sign telling the odd visitor who might stray off the path and go over rocks to see the sign mostly covered by bushes. Traditional clamming grounds of tribes. I’ve talked to people who have lived here 50 years and they never ventured off the paved path at Devil’s Churn and seen the sign. Here’s my poem about Amanda, a Native Woman forcefully marched to Yachats, barefoot and blind. “Not Just One of those Tales of Another Dead Indian“
Again, these stories, these events, since I’ve been around the world, embroiled in social justice movements, anti-racism movements, and, well, I have my take on the history of the USA and the world. Here, Peter and Zach, taking off the cover to give the crowd the Louis statue of him fiddling.
Here, Carol Van Strum, next to Louis. She’s been featured in several stories I’ve written, and her fiction novel, The Oreo File, has a mixed race protagonist and lots about Louis Southworth. Read my piece on Carol and her fight against the forest service and state with their sprays (pesticides) that have caused genetic damage and other chronic illnesses: “A real-life Toxic Avenger“.
She also has her own story of a Black son, Jordan, who was put in jail for a murder he did not commit: Read my piece on his story, and Carol’s here: “A letter a day for 15 years and 9 months“. She came down from her Five Rivers house, 30 minutes away, to meet the artist and to give him a copy of her book, signed. I was there taking 100 photos, talking to various people I knew and those I just met.
Here, Peter is messing with a 110 year old violin an elderly lady from Waldport (she actually is from all over, and said this violin was made in Iowa, and she was a concert violinist until she broke her neck and could no longer play).
Here’s Zach’s organization website, Oregon Black Pioneers. Here’s just some of what he said at the ceremony:
Just before his death in 1917, it was reported that Louis Southworth was denied a military pension because his name wasn’t recorded in the volunteer lists. And this, despite a testimonial written on his behalf by his former commanding officer. In response, 218 Oregonians sent in donations totaling $243 to help cover Louis’ living expenses in his final days. Some of those people might be relatives of folks in this room. But it saddens me, that someone who had achieved so much would be forced to live on the charity of others.
All of this demonstrates how Louis Southworth seemed to live multiple lives. Slave and freeman; laborer and entrepreneur; squatter and homesteader; soldier and pauper; excluded and included. Louis was not just a jolly old man living quietly in the background. He actively participated in some of the most significant events in the history of Oregon.
And more than perhaps any other person, Louis’s time in Oregon spans the most transformational moments for Black Americans in the state. Consider this– around the year Louis Southworth was born, York, the first Black person to reach Oregon by land, died, likely less than 200 miles away. The year Louis Southworth died, Mercedes Diez, who would go on to become Oregon’s first Black judge in the 1970s, was born. Louis is a link in the chain of historic Black individuals that stretches from 1770 to 2005!
That is how close we are to the past. A great colleague of mine named Richard Josey once posed an amazing question at a museum conference. He asked, “What kind of ancestor will you be?”. Let’s look to the example of Louis Southworth, whose story and accomplishments have inspired people, then and now. And whose resiliency was matched only by his generosity. A truly historic person.
I did learn from several farmers, including Tom Bailey, that when the facility was being built, many African Americans were brought into this dryland of Washington on the Columbia River. The Tri-Cities of Richland-Kennewick-Pasco. There was a part of town where the blacks lived, there were a few black establishments including bars and stores, and black churches. The justice for these workers was harsh, or should I say, the injustice. That facility was being built in the 1940s. I was shown some of the places, both still standing and others decrepit and falling apart.
Then, in Portland, Vanport, I got my education on that racist history. Here, a website, Hidden History:
Race is not a topic we often discuss in public settings, at least not explicitly. We are told we are in a “postracial” landscape, yet race is the number one determinant of access to health care, home ownership, graduation rates, and income, as the data from the Urban League of Portland below show.
We can’t understand these disparities without understanding history. I didn’t grow up in Oregon; I moved here to attend high school. It wasn’t until I had the privilege of attending a presentation by Darrell Millner, founder of Portland State University’s Black Studies Department, that I learned Oregon was created as a white utopian homeland. That Oregon was the only state that entered the Union with a clause in its constitution forbidding Black people to live here. That the punishment originally meted out for violating this exclusionary law was the “Lash Law”: public whipping every six months until the Black person left the state. That this ideology shaped Oregon’s entire history and was reflected in the larger history of this nation. — Walidah Imarisha
Again, laborers, workers, coming to Portland in the 1940s to help sustain the construction of homes, warehouses, other buildings for its rapid growth. Vanport was built as a temporary housing solution to Portland’s rapidly growing population. At its peak it housed nearly 40,000 residents, close to 40 percent were African-American. But an unusually wet spring in 1948 created a hole in the railroad dike blocking the Columbia River, and it erupted into massive flooding. City officials didn’t warn residents of the dangerously high water levels and opted not to evacuate. The town was wiped out within a day and 18,500 families were displaced, more than a third African-American.
So, the Albina section of Portland was the only place for Blacks, but with these displaced folk, some of which were taken in by other families, black and white, they had not other place in Portland to live. Many left the area. Now? Gentrification, racist policing, and, yep, with my Masters in Urban Planning, lots of redlining and zoning issues tied to making African Americans personas non grata. It’s disgusting.
The great Southern Migration, years after Southworth passed on in 1919. Many now living in Stumptown know nothing about that migration of Black men and women arriving to Portland by the many thousands, increasing Portland’s black population tenfold in a few years. Between 1940 and 1950, the city’s black population increased more than any West Coast city other than Oakland and San Francisco.
It was part of a demographic change seen in cities across America, as blacks left the South for the North and West in what became known as the Great Migration, or what Isabel Wilkerson, in her acclaimed history of the period, The Warmth of Other Suns, calls “the biggest underreported story of the 20th century.” From 1915 to 1960, nearly six million blacks left their Southern homes, seeking work and better opportunities in Northern cities, with nearly 1.5 million leaving in the 1940s, seduced by the call of WWII industries and jobs. Many seeking employment headed West, lured by the massive shipyards of the Pacific coast. (Source)
Here we are in this complicated story, 2022, where Native Americans have been pushed out by the Old World coming into this continent for making money, exploiting land, moving immigrants to lay claim on land for farming and settlements with no regard to the hundreds of American Indian tribes. The Indian war lasted over three hundred years, from 1602 to 1926. Almost every buffalo in the 60 million population was exterminated, as a way to kill American Indian culture.
I’ve got some time at Fort Huachuca, the home of the Buffalo Soldier, the African American union soldiers who also did their duty to help pacify and exterminate the Indians. The First African American troops to arrive in Arizona at Fort Huachuca were the Buffalo Soldiers in the 1890s — the 9th and 10th Cavalries. The Fort Huachuca Buffalo Soldiers distinguished themselves in the Spanish American War and the charge up San Juan Hill.
The African American Soldier At Fort Huachuca, Arizona, 1892-1946 American Plains Indians who fought against these soldiers referred to the black cavalry troops as “buffalo soldiers” because of their dark, curly hair, which resembled a buffalo’s coat and because of their fierce nature of fighting. The nickname soon became synonymous with all African-American regiments formed in 1866.
You can read my piece coming out November 23 here at Dissident Voice, you know, for National Day of Mourning. The so-called Thanksgiving (for whom?). Again, the Southworth story is amazing, but it conjures up many issues tied to the Indian Removal actions of the many who came into their lands and stole. Sure, the series, The English, is just one aspect of those dirty Anglo Saxons coming out here to kill Indians: Yeah, it is a six part romance thing:
Or Terrance Malick’s, The New World:
Or the Redford produced, The American West.
Complicated feelings for me living on burial ground, by the Alsea River, in the old part of Waldport, and I can almost see that field, that soon-to-be Southworth Park. So many homeless, so many domestic violence cases, so many Native youth in schools here doing not so well. So many backward thinkers, and then all the transplants, who, well, they go to the Southworth show, but would they come to a lecture and viewing on Black Panthers’s struggles, or for on “In Prison My Whole Life – Mumia Abu-Jamal (Documentary)”
I am Not your Negro and Exterminate all the beasts:
Here, I’ll let Zach have the last word:
All of the images feature a seated Louis Southworth wearing a shabby coat and holding his fiddle. In one, he is facing away from the camera in his living room, and in the other where he is looking directly into the camera with a smile. The former was used on the cover of Elizabeth McLagan’s landmark 1980 book, A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788-1940; the latter is featured on Louis’ headstone in Crystal Lake Cemetery in Corvallis. The epitaph reads “A bit of heaven’s music here below”.
Louis’ smile is infectious, and when you look at him, it almost feels as if you know him personally. No doubt, these photos continue to inspire appreciation for Louis. But unfortunately, we should question why these photos were made, and what they were meant to represent to viewers in 1915.
John Horner was not a journalist, but an anthropologist at Oregon State University, and the founder of the city’s first museum. He was a proponent of phrenology, and in his lab, he studied human skulls which he had stolen from Native graves to try and find proof of racial hierarchies. In 1931, he was hired to investigate a grave site at Three Rocks –not far from here—and determined that one of these skulls had [quote] “an extremely thick skull, indicative of negroid characteristics”. This skull too, was taken back to Horner’s lab for study.
Why would this anthropologist take photos and write an article about Louis Southworth? I can’t help but think of the staged images of Indigenous peoples that anthropologists and photographers used to document the tragedy of the supposedly-“vanishing” Indians. Edward Curtis’ “The North American Indian” had been first exhibited only eight years earlier. It seems to me that Horner was making a similar documentation of Louis. No one was suggesting that Black Americans were disappearing from Oregon in the 1910s –in fact, Oregon’s Black population was the highest it had ever been—but Louis represented something different. He too, was the last of his kind. The last of the enslaved Oregonians; the last trace of the “Old South” which had emigrated west during the pioneer days.
White Oregonians could be pleased by the “Uncle Lou” they saw in the newspaper, while at the same time, be virulently opposed to the growing Black progressive class in Portland. The same year this article was printed, Oregon voters rejected a ballot measure to repeal the state’s ban on interracial marriage, and rejected a measure to remove the Black exclusion language from the Oregon Constitution, even though it was no longer legally enforceable.
It still was a moving day for me, for sure, in its own way. I also told Zach and a few others I’d be writing something about the event, but to not expect some inverted Triangle News Piece. I can never take away the genuine feelings people yesterday expressed for this history, this man, and the park.
This is a rite of passage that needs to go the way of the Dodo.
Mercenaries, and now, we have a blue blood son, grandson to Robert Kennedy, heading out to Ukraine with some sad sack ideas about what he in the name of Hell is going to do in that country?
Yep, RFK Jr., let out the news recently, on Megyn Kelly. The newspapers picked it up:
“He felt that he shouldn’t be arguing about it unless he was willing to have skin in the game and take his own risk,” Kennedy said on “The Megyn Kelly Show” of his son’s decision to go to the war-torn country.
Kennedy said his son signed up for the Foreign Legion at the Ukrainian Embassy and was a drone pilot before he was promoted to a “machine gunner.”
“He didn’t have any military experience and kind of talked his way into the unit,” he added. “He’s been in firefights, mainly nighttime, and a lot of artillery fights with the Russians.”
“He had a job for a law firm, a really good law firm in Los Angeles, and I was looking forward to him living with me for the summer,” he said of his son’s initial plans.
When probing him further about Conor Kennedy’s plans, his son said, “I’m not going. I want to talk to you. I don’t want you to ask me what I’m doing.”
“I was like, ‘Um…,’” he explained. “And he said, ‘I will explain it to you at some point, but I do not want you to ask me now, and if you could just respect that it would mean a lot to me.’ So I did.”
We can discuss what the role of parenting has to do with bringing up children who might find it necessary to shoot at people to get skin in the game. Now, Conor is 28, that is, 28 years old, not months, yet as a teacher of many souls over four decades, I can say he is most certainly arrested developed (so many American men are), and this whole idea of having skin in the game is beyond insane. Kind reader, what were you doing at age 28? Wanting skin in the game? Which game? Hmm, I went to Central America before age 28, and I was working with refugees in Arizona in my 19 to 21 years of age time frame. I was involved in journalism, too, young, at 17, and then reporting on some things like El Salvadorans perishing in the desert near where I was headquartered, and some on the drug tunnels down also near Bisbee. Also, reporting on the military putting up aerostat balloons along the border to try and capture undocumented workers. I even did a story on some of those Posse Comitatus folk, the border patriots (sic) who went out there armed and lock ‘n’ loaded.
Nope, no blue blood in my line. Yep, plenty of military around me with an old man in cryptology in the Air Force and then Army. Germany, France, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Yes, and I am named after a grandfather who was a WWI pilot in the Germany navy-air force, flying triple-wing planes. He was in post-WWI Germany, seeing the wheelbarrows of Deutsche Marks for a loaf of bread. He also — before the German loss — in the Battle of Jutland, on a ship, the Rostock, that was hit and distressed with hundreds dead. He floated on the flotsam of war and watched the battle ensue and then the two sides with white flags came into the war theater to pick up the wounded and dead.
And, of course, I had Irish and Scottish and English and Canadian family in that war, but also in WWII. Uncle Ian was on a submarine for the British, and German family members on the Russian front, and alas, relatives who survived the bombing of Dresden.
Yeah, I heard stories about Paul Haeder’s exploits on a tall sail ship learning how to be a soldier, and listened intently his war experiences, and learned about his post-WWI life, and his life in Iowa and South Dakota (my grandfather ended up in Iowa and South Dakota as the last of seven brothers who hit Ellis Island before WWI). Paul found work as a former lieutenant impossible — coal mining and “working” the food trains with orders to shoot fellow Germans, per the Pinkerton outfit, if they rushed the trains for food, bread, foodstuffs. That wasn’t Paul Haeder’s ethos, so he never did the dirty deeds of shooting Germans hungrier than rabid dogs.
Now, of course, forgotten history of that putrid, Patton and MacArthur, and their dirty deeds killing their own veterans:
In 1932, 17,000 former soldiers marched on Washington, D.C. to demand wartime pay owed to them. The Great Depression ravaged the country, and a president took desperate measures to disperse the angry veterans.
Tanks rolled down the streets. Soldiers held people at bayonet-point. Veterans and their families took lungs full of tear gas. People died.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur — then the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff — led the 12th Infantry Regiment and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment into the fray.
The cavalry regiment contained six Renault FT tanks commanded by Maj. George Patton. The Army troops, with bayonets affixed to their rifles, charged into the shanty town and launched tear gas into the crowds. (source)
Skin in the game? Hmm. So, growing up on air force bases, army posts and outside Paris, on SHAPE and NATO compounds, I was truly interested in the stories of men and women, and the accounts of dudes who were in Vietnam, or hanging onto my old man’s Korea stories and his recalling about what happened in Vietnam, though he was pretty much a zipped up mouth on those wars. He worked in NATO caves in France and Germany, as a signal corps warrant officer, and we all in the family had to have FBI-level background checks.
I wonder what a 13-year-old is doing learning about Black Panthers, Cesar Chavez, Che Guevara, and much much more? That was me. I learned about Ho Chi Minh from some of my older sister’s friends who had come back from Vietnam, mentally wounded, hooked on smack, some wounded physically, and most anti-American, anti-War.
No blue blood in my family.
Look, yes, I am trauma informed, and this image, or these two, are full of context and whatever this Conor believes in, in terms of killing humans, Russians, and some of them, if he was a drone operator, civilians, that would be an interesting discussion and debate.
So, listening to RFK, Junior, Conor’s dad, I stuck with him throughout the wide-ranging two-hour Megyn Kelly interview, which in my mind is less of a journalistic interview and more of the same old celebrity cultish thing a multimillionaire Kelly was doing (interviewing) with another multimillionaire, RFK, Jr.
I wrote this to a fellow writer I respect, and who publishes many amazing pieces. He’s a bit older than I am, I believe. Here:
Yeah, ECC, we have this fascination with blue blood, the Kennedys, Bush, those coming out of Ivy League schools, who are millionaires who hang with billionaires.
His son, well, has to be judged on what he was doing, and alas, Ukraine is the most corrupt nation in the world, in some sense. So, there are many issues tied to what the quality of his character is.
He’s a mercenary, and this is war porn. He wasn’t even in any military. He talked his way into the Mercenary Legions. Lied. Oh, he is an athlete, which is a big Kennedy thing.
The entire thing will give this kid a cleared pipeline to multi-millions, and his book will be coming out soon, Oprah-approved, soon.
The kid (man, age 28) wouldn’t even tell his parents where he was going, what he was up to. That is something deeply troubling to me because I have friends and a spouse who have been estranged by their children. There are Facebook groups with the title “Mothers of Estranged Children.” Many of these women were just hard working single mothers, and something snapped in the children. There are 70 year old women who have never met children’s children, and even great grandkids. This is pretty deeply ingrained in my own background in trauma informed case management with homeless civilians and veterans and those hooked on drugs and those just released from prison.
I’m 65, been to Central America as a journalist, covered the US-Mexico border, been with US military as a college instructor at the Sergeant Major Academy at Fort Bliss. My old man was in 32 years. Air Force and then Army. Clandestine stuff, crypto stuff. We ended up in the Azores and then Germany and France and UK. I got to see and hear a lot of stuff. I am, was early, anti-military on so many levels
Very young (13) I was already seeing the destruction of the world through the military state, through corporate malfeasance, through the professional managerial class, and the lawyer class. This kid (man) at this age, 28, is really going to be part of the problem for socialists and social-environmental-cultural warriors like myself, and anyone who might come up as decent, smart and thoughtful adults in our current generation. We have a lot of work to do, and putting one’s effort into machismo, into this trip into a corrupt place, thinking Putin is a Gangster, well, what sort of upbringing did he have?
FYI: In the Megyn interview RFK admits he got the mRNA, and so did his children, 7.
Whew. Amazing, no, ECC.
Trauma, man. So much trauma in the Kennedy family. Epigenetic, and who the hell knows what kind of trauma is in Conor’s immediate family. I am trauma informed, so I can’t judge too much on that level.
Then, Aaron and Gabor Mate, an older interview, on the trauma, the mental illnesses and pain that propelled people to believe in Russia Gate.
Thanks, ECC. A real interview with you one of these days?
Here’s the show’s low down blurb:
Megyn Kelly is joined by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., author of “A Letter to Liberals,” to discuss COVID pandemic orthodoxy, the need for discussion and debate, the elimination of freedoms due to the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci demanding blind faith in authority, the important issue of whether the COVID vaccines prevent transmission, myocarditis risk from COVID and from vaccines, rise in “unexplained” deaths in a post-COVID vaccine world, the truth about how many lives COVID vaccines saved and lost, the lack of important data needed to understand the rise in deaths post-COVID, what Fauci said about vaccines that could have an adverse effect before the COVID vaccines were available, the absurdity of the new booster which was only tested on eight mice and no humans, Pfizer’s involvement in the Trump administration, Alex Berenson and tech censorship, RFK’s disbanded “vaccine safety” commission, Scott Gottlieb and our supposed medical elite, American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations, problems with the VAERS system, personal backlash from family and friends, his views of Donald Trump then and now, Herschel Walker and our politics today, the war in Ukraine, American imperialism, RFK’s personal connection to the war as his son Conor was fighting in the country, and more.
Look, these issues need to be discussed. In the interview, there is discussion about Trump, about politicians’ public lives versus private lives, and how we weigh the bad people perpetrate in their families, in their own house and jobs, their personal personas, against the good their policy and governance might come off as part of their public life. My writer friend was upset that RFK, Jr. calls Putin a thug and gangster, while at the same time, RFK JR does speak out against the cancel left, against the war drumming and against the endless pit of money and arms for nothing to ZioLensky. Kennedy laments that there is $7 a gallon of gasoline in California, equating that to the war/Putin (?), but really, the USA is (has been for decades) in a major free-fall, and, people are struggling with double-triple-quadruple cost of living; i.e., food, coffee, drugs, and now Pfizer, who got the jab approved by CDC for children’s yearly vaccination, well, they also announced the company will be upping the price of the dirty jab, to $110 a shot, which is four times the current price.
I wonder what these lawyers working for these outfits have in terms of skin in the game? Will they head to Yemen to see what it’s like to have USA-UK supplied bombs to Saudi Arabia. Skin in the game in Haiti stealing that country’s resources and stealing the coffers? Which skin in the game will the American put forth who wants to know what it is to take on a stand on any issue psychologically and intellectually without having to put one’s ass in the game?
It is a blue in the face routine now attempting to talk about Nuland and Maidan, about the Donbass and the ethnic cleansing? All of the history of Putin wanting diplomacy, wanting to be part of the Eurozone, to be on good terms with Germany, and to advance nuclear weapon decommissioning.
The thuggery and gansterism RFK Jr. and Conor Kennedy espouse about Putin, that’s way off, sort of brainwashed opinion. Putin is a million times more informed and sensible than Biden or Blinken. They have skin in the game, a la Raytheon et al.
Here, trauma, and what exactly is-was-continues to go on in the minds of Russia Gate freaks:
GABOR MATÉ: What does it say about American society that so many people are actually enrolled in believing that this man could be any kind of a savior? What does that say about the divisions and the conflicts and the contradictions and the genuine problems in this culture? And how do we address those issues?
You can look at that. Or you can say there must be a devil somewhere behind all this, and that devil is a foreign power, and his name is Putin, and his country is Russia. Now you’ve got a simple explanation that doesn’t invite you or necessitate that you explore your own pain and your own fear and your own trauma.
So I really believe that really this Russia gate narrative was, on the part of a lot of people, a sign of genuine upset at something genuinely upsetting. But rather than dealing with the upset, it was an easier way to in a sense draw off the energy of it in to some kind of a believable and comforting narrative. It’s much more comforting to believe that some enemy is doing this to us than to look at what does it say about us as a society.
I mean there was a massive denial of the actual dynamics in American society that led to the election of this traumatized and traumatizing individual as President, number one.
AARON MATÉ: Because you think Donald Trump himself is traumatized?
GABOR MATÉ: Oh, Donald Trump is a clearest example of a traumatized politician one could ever see. He’s in denial of reality all the time. He is self aggrandizing. His fundamental self concept is that of a nobody. So he has to make himself huge and big all the time and keep proving to the world how powerful and smart, what kind of degrees he’s got and how smart he is. It’s a compensation for terrible self image. He can’t pay attention to anything, which means that his brain is too scattered because it was too painful for him to pay attention.
What does this all come down to? The childhood that we know that he had in the home of a dictatorial child disparaging father, and a very weak
AARON MATÉ: Fred Trump, his father.
GABOR MATÉ: Who demeaned his children mercilessly. One of Trump’s brothers drank himself to death. And Trump compensates for all that by trying to make himself as big and powerful and successful as possible. And, of course, he makes up for his anger towards his mother for not protecting him by attacking women and exploiting women and boasting about it publicly. I mean, it’s a clear trauma example. I’m not saying this to invite sympathy for Trump’s politics. I’m just describing that that’s who the man is. And the fact that such a traumatized individual can be elected to the position of what they call the most powerful person in the world speaks to a traumatized society.
And like individuals can be in denial, a society can be in denial. So this society is deeply in denial about its own trauma, and particularly in this case about the trauma of that election. So one way to deal with trauma is denial of it. The other way is to project onto other people things that you don’t like about yourself.
Now, it’s only a matter of historical fact. And no serious person, no serious student of history can possibly deny how the United States has interfered in the internal politics of just about every nation on earth.
There is lots of skin in the game for all of us surviving in various stages and steps trauma. How many countries has the USA bombed, sanctioned, proxied, and stolen from? That is another fun thing, right, visiting those countries and donating some mutual aid support — skin in the game — by planting trees, feeding children, digging water systems. But putting on combat gear and playing tin soldier with live rounds and drones, hmm, that is an interesting skin in the game.
Here, Jim Chambers, from the rich and famous Cox news-cable family, he too went to Ukraine, Donbass, as a reporter:
When I asked him about his perspectives on the conflict now, versus when he made the decision to come over, his repeated emphasis was that he had been “extremely uninformed” when he was still in Alabama and relying on the narrative being spun by Western media. “I can tell you that I was very surprised to see most women and children still at home and living normally in all the major Ukrainian cities I went to. And when I was detained here in Donetsk, it was the first time I had been able to speak to any Russians or Russian-speakers from Donbass. There’s a side of the story that we’re not getting in America.” He noted that even from his cell in Donetsk, he had been hearing constant explosions, every day, coming from Ukrainian shelling of the city, something he had never anticipated. “Nothing in the Western media shows you that this is a civil war, and one that’s been going on a long time.” He didn’t go as far as disavowing the Ukrainian state, or endorsing the Russian “special military operation,” but he repeatedly said to me, “If I had known the truth about what was going on over here, I would never have made the decision to come. I regret it.”
Feelings of sympathy for a man in a life-and-death predicament, who at face value seems to have been duped into his decision, above all else, are completely understandable. But some on the Donetsk side of the conflict aren’t shedding many tears for him, or for similar detainees. Russell “Texas” Bentley is a U.S.-born veteran of the DPR armed forces, having served from 2014 to 2017, and he is a resident of Donetsk. Bentley shared with me his thoughts on Drueke and those like him.
“Yeah, a lot of these punks were just too big for their britches, and that’s almost forgivable. But what they wanted to do was come here to kill, and if the shoe had been on the other foot, they wouldn’t have hesitated. I was behind Ukrop [Ukrainian] lines twice, and didn’t fire a shot either time. Every single battle I was ever in was defensive. We held a position, and the Ukrops came to attack us, and they’d have killed us all if they could have. So, it will be an educational experience for them, hopefully give them a bit of a head start in their next life.” (source — ‘I Regret’ Being a Mercenary in Ukraine: Conversation with U.S. POW Detained in Donbass)
“Here is Texas Russell Bentley: From Texas to Donbass: Meet the American fighting Ukrainian fascists”
I used to show lots of movie clips to my students in Texas, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon. Lots of controversial (sic) books, and tons of articles and professional journal studies. Controversial, in their face, and much of it was during Reagan’s illegal wars, Panama, Bush One and Kuwait and Iraq, Bush Two, Iraq, Clinton, even Obama. Many many complaints about exposing youth and older students to things that went boom in their heads. Everything was on-limits, no holds barred. We talked, debated and then I got students to research and think critically and with the right tools of rhetoric, a la centuries of clear thinking, proposing, comparing and contrasting, looking at causes and effects, all of the ways we classify, argue, persuade, define and connotate and how we engage in those techniques of propaganda, and how to get through with objectivity and then what powerful tools narrative writing can give us. Pat Tillman — Conor, ever see him?
Look, RFK Jr. did say that we are imperfect, that is, the human race. He was stating how Hershel Walker can be candidate X, antiabortion vis-à-vis policy, but in his own life, having been a part of abortions with his spouses and partners, that is just the contradictory way of politics. It all makes sense as a Catholic who believes in redemption. I am not going to knock that. Conor, becoming a high priced lawyer one day, well, maybe he will do great things for humankind.
Maybe doing the mercenary thing in Ukraine will give Conor better perspectives. Now, Russell Bentley, I have had email exchanges with him. Yes, he has hit some of the same places I have hit — El Paso, Tucson, etc. He went to Donbass, and he married a Ukrainian-Russian, and he lives in the Donbass and reports from the Donbass. Yes, he sent me his memoir:
Robert Kennedy said he is not doctrinaire or hard-headed, and that he learns and changes over time. He repeats how he was working as an environmental lawyer, and that he was part of Riverkeeper, for which there are over 350 rivers around the world with a keeper testing water, supporting the river life and acting as a pied piper for a healthy river. He was suing over poisons in the rivers, mercury. He stated that he was dogged by some women at one of his talks. One woman gave him a stack of briefs and reports on mercury preservatives in Vaccines and other issues tied to vaccine injuries. The vaccine fight he was not a part of for years, until persistent citizens and a medical doctor brought it to his attention. I understand that old saw, “No one is perfect . . . Homo Sapiens is a messy, troubled species.”
That’s a given And we all have skin in the game when it comes to peace, life, truth, and reconciling our own trauma with healing and loving thy neighbor. The whole Putin is a Gangster thing is interesting, for sure, and alas, Capitalists Are Gangsters, sure, I get to deploy that one all the time. Murder Incorporated, the Value of Nothing, the Sociopathic Rich, and so much more I can also utilize as descriptors of the USA, then and now. Did Conor take in that book, War is a Racket? Did he weigh Butler’s words with the reality of Russia wanting Minsk II to be abided by before signing up for weaponizing his idea of skin in the game? What was Nuland doing in Kiev? Biden and Hunter? Are we all going to default on redemption for any sin? That we are all imperfect souls? Did Conor have real deep talks with people outside the frame of Putin is a Gangster?
I recommend reading, All Quiet on the Western Front (1929). The book, and now, a 2022 German movie of the book:
“But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”
Remarque’s novel saw censorship outside of Germany as well. In the United States, the English translation was banned in Boston on grounds of obscenity; and in Chicago, U.S. customs had seized any volumes which had not been expurgated. Austrian soldiers were forbidden to read the novel, Czech military libraries removed copies from their shelves, while Italy banned the novel entirely due to its anti-war, pacifist agenda. Despite its success, or perhaps because of it, Remarque had his German citizenship revoked and was forced into exile. Just before the onset of World War II in Europe, Remarque and his wife left Switzerland for the United States. They became official U.S. citizens in 1947. (source)
Now? The sides, that is, the many sides, to Ukraine and Nazis and Bandera and Zelensky and Coups and USA and CIA, and then, Putin and Russian demands for stopping the existential threat of NATO moving east with all their bombs bursting in air. John Pilger stated it correctly recently:
Much of this propaganda originates in the US, and is transmitted through proxies and ‘think-tanks’, such as the notorious Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the voice of the arms industry, and by zealous journalists such as Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald, who labeled those spreading Chinese influence as ‘rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows’ and called for these ‘pests’ to be ‘eradicated’.
News about China in the West is almost entirely about the threat from Beijing. Airbrushed are the 400 American military bases that surround most of China, an armed necklace that reaches from Australia to the Pacific and south east Asia, Japan and Korea. The Japanese island of Okinawa and the Korean island of Jeju are loaded guns aimed point blank at the industrial heart of China. A Pentagon official described this as a ‘noose’.
Palestine has been misreported for as long as I can remember. To the BBC, there is the ‘conflict’ of ‘two narratives’. The longest, most brutal, lawless military occupation in modern times is unmentionable.
The stricken people of Yemen barely exist. They are media unpeople. While the Saudis rain down their American cluster bombs with British advisors working alongside the Saudi targeting officers, more than half a million children face starvation.
This brainwashing by omission has a long history. The slaughter of the First World War was suppressed by reporters who were knighted for their compliance and confessed in their memoirs. In 1917, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, C.P. Scott, confided to prime minister Lloyd George: ‘If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow, but they don’t know and can’t know.’ (‘Silencing the Lambs — How Propaganda Works‘)
Then, on a sad and inspiring (for some) note tied to other types of humans who might be coming to Donbass to fight what they believe is the good fight.
That’s Alex Castillo, who was a fighter in Donbass since 2014. From Spain, but born in Columbia. It’s a tough comparison, right, Kennedy and Castillo. This man had skin in the game, family in the game, was there to defend the people of Donbass being murdered by Ukraine, vis-a-vis USA material and training and NATO beefing up.
He was a communist, too, which is contrary to the bleeding heart liberals who are wrapped in blue and yellow and demand more more more for Zelensky, who has rounded up communists. Russia, by the way, isn’t communist, since so many Americans I will send this article to might need some reminding.
Russell Bentley is in Donbass and was in the fighting groups with Castillo. Bentley is a communist, colorful, sometimes bombastic, but not afraid to call a spade a spade, and he has that robust energy still in his older age days (63) of someone critical of USA, of Ukraine and of Russia’s decision makers who Russell believes have really messed up the fight against the AFU and Azov folk in Donbass region.
But he has tributes for Castillo, just recently killed in fighting:
Alexis was a true Communist, and a real Internationalist. He often spoke of going to Syria or Venezuela or Cuba after our victory here in Donbass, to defend the people and the socialism there. He did not love war, not by any means, he hated it, as we all do here, as all decent people do, but he was good at the job, and the job needed to be done. As all combat veterans know, we are all born with only so much luck, and the more time you spend in the places where the bullets fly, the closer you get to the day your luck runs out. Alexis spent 8 years as a front line soldier, a sniper in a Spetsnaz unit, and he never, ever hesitated when it was his turn to go. And when his time came to meet death, two weeks after our good friend Elia was killed, Alexis met it like a hero, advancing on the enemy with a weapon in his hand. Alexis was truly a Che Guevara of the 21st century, and Alexis had said, as did Che, “I do not care if I fall, as long as another ear hears my battle cry, and another hand picks up my gun.” (“Adios, Alex Castillo: A Donbas hero falls on Oct. 28″).
Any sort of tribute to a fighter like Castillo in the circles I intersect with is verboten, literally. Cancelled, called a traitor, called a Putin lover, called a Trumpster, called any number of names that are completely antithetical to who and what I am. Or, you might end up in a Michigan Democratic rally, with Obama stumping, and god forbid you confront Obama about his administration’s work in Ukraine in 2014, and not only will you get the swarmy and bs Obama folksy retort — “We are all friends here . . . you’ll have time to speak” — but you will get those blue democrats, men, women, children, old and young, hating on Russia and just not ready for any pushback against their multimillionaire-soon-to-be-a-pro-basketball-team-owner Obama. Yelling, “Down with Russia . . . Putin is our enemy.” You know, no antiwar chants, or chants of peace talks, or chants against escalation, of nuclear saber rattling by Biden. Obama is truly a stump. These are his rallies in Michigan, and he was in Oregon, stumping for the democratic candidate for governor. What’s that got to do with ex-President’s multimillionaire package?
I know it’s “only” Jimmy Dore below covering that Michigan event, but heck, no pushback from mainstream media, so here, watch Democratic Party rally with Obama pushed through the Dore seive: “Peace Activists Heckle Obama Over Nuclear War”
All those dead Ukrainians, and Russians, and fighters like Castillo, and this is the end result for so many of them — what they leave behind:
We are in some very sick and strange times —
Deep Critical Analysis Needed EVERY Veterans’ Day, USA’s National Holiday, November 11!
Ah, “Food as a weapon: Bucharest, Rome and the politics of starvation,” that’s 1974, and old Kissinger was at it, as were those US eugenics lovers:
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger hoped to use the conference as a forum to link food shortages to overpopulation. Kissinger tried to put the blame for the food crisis on the oil producing nations and the “energy crisis” they brought about and made it clear that the U.S. no longer plans to provide most of the world’s food aid. The underdeveloped nations did not accept this. They still blame the crisis on the U.S., which they say controls more food than the fuel the oil producing nations control. The U.S. has historically used food as a tool of foreign policy, and with the increasing dependency of the U.S. on the raw supplies of the underdeveloped world, there is growing talk of using food to blackmail nations into adopting population control programs. One such proposal came in Rome by former U.S. government official Richard Gardner, who suggested a “global survival pact” under which rich nations would conserve food, energy, and raw materials in return for commitments by Third World nations to change their suicidal demographic, agricultural and environmental practices. Another proposal was made by Congressman Jerry Litton who said he would introduce legislation banning food aid to any country with above average population growth and which was not doing anything to reduce it. (source)
And, what was the Agent Orange’s gift that keeps on giving?
From 1962 to 1971, the U.S. Air Force sprayed nearly 19 million gallons of herbicides in Vietnam, of which at least 11 million gallons was Agent Orange, in a military project called Operation Ranch Hand. An additional quantity (1.6 million gallons has been documented) of herbicides was applied to base perimeters, roadways, and communication lines by helicopter and surface sprayings from riverboats, trucks, or backpacks. Herbicide operations in Vietnam had two primary military objectives: (1) defoliation of trees and plants to improve observation, and (2) destruction of enemy crops. (Veterans and Agent Orange:Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam)
Check out the Dissident Voice piece I did on that issue: “Eternal Impunity of Capitalism’s Crimes/ Agent Orange, a fifty-fifty mix of the n-butyl esters 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T)”
Then, before Indochina, we have old ideas from the 20th century (1948) from the apartheid terrorist state, Israel:
The Israeli army used chemical and biological weapons during the 1948 war, including poisoning water wells in several Palestinian towns, original documents stored in the Israel State Archive, as well as other archives revealed.
The documents showed that Israeli political and military leaders and some scholars were partners in the decision, and had even planned to poison the waters in Cairo and Beirut, but changed their mind at the last minute. (source)
[Nakba]
More, though, recently, with AI machine guns pointed on Palestinians:
Palestinians argue the remote-controlled gun has a more sinister intention than the army is letting on. “Israeli security companies use Palestinians as training objects,” Amro said. “The Israeli army practices their new technology [on Palestinians] to check if it’s working or not, then they sell it to other countries.” (Mint Press News)
Then those Skunk weapons, using stink chemicals:
Israeli security forces have been using the stink bomb — named Skunk – on Palestinian protesters since 2008 and sell the material to armies and law implementation organizations around the globe.
Skunk is mixed with water and fired through water cannons for crowd control. While the bomb is harmless, it has a smell that can remain for days, even after rainfalls.
A Reuters reporter described the smell as follows: “Imagine taking a lump of rotten carcass from the sewer, placing it in a blender and spraying the filthy liquid on your face. Your gag reflex goes off the charts and you can’t escape, because the nauseating stench persists for days.” (source)
One man’s stink is another country’s crapper issues, so shall we send in the clowns, and ask: What Toilet Would ZioLensky Beg For?
San Francisco’s local government expects to spend up to $1.7 million to build just one public toilet – hardly a drop in the bucket for a city that gets thousands of complaints annually of feces on its sidewalks – and the project will take an estimated three years to complete.
Imagine how the Zionists in Israel must feel about this fact: “After a three-and-a-half-year legal battle waged by the Gisha human rights organization, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has finally released a 2008 document that detailed its “red lines” for “food consumption in the Gaza Strip.”
The document calculates the minimum number of calories necessary, in COGAT’s view, to keep Gaza residents from malnutrition at a time when Israel was tightening its restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of the Strip, including food products and raw materials. The document states that Health Ministry officials were involved in drafting it, and the calculations were based on “a model formulated by the Ministry of Health … according to average Israeli consumption,” though the figures were then “adjusted to culture and experience” in Gaza.” (source)
Oh, the horror, the heart of darkness, those ZioLensky followers and facilitators. How’s that food going to taste when another Chernobyl is unleashed by these crazy, insane, misanthrope Ukrainians? Sick.
The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, the largest facility of its kind in Europe, is located on the shore of the Dnepr just outside the city. Ukraine wants it bombed.
These monsters in the Collective West, man, will do anything, just anything: The Pentagon has modelled a situation in which the Kakhovka dam would be blown up and what consequences it would have for the region.
“Bankova took these calculations into account and agreed to missile attacks on it (the dam),” write Ukro experts who have access to the political backstage of the Ukrainian authorities.
In 1985, specialists of the All-Union Design and Research Institute “Gidroproekt” analyzed the consequences of a hypothetical failure of the Kakhovka reservoir dam. Naturally, in Soviet times these data were kept behind seven seals.
In 2004, the Kherson newspaper “Hryvna” published an article “We are not ready for local apocalypse”, which revealed details of the secret report of the Hydro project. If the dam explodes, millions of tons of water will hit Kherson with a speed of 24.4 kilometers hour and a wave height of 1 meter. In as little as 2.5 hours, a fairly sharp rise in level to 4.8 meters would follow. The flooding will last for three days and will completely destroy the regional center.
“This conflict will have more people dying from water treatment plants going down than from the war itself,” says Geoff Keele, a spokesman for UNICEF, in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan. He was based in Baghdad until the start of the war. (source)
And, alas, Mission Accomplished in Iraq? The gift that keeps on giving,
In the event of war, the breakdown of power supplies to hospitals, together with the shortage of medical equipment, medicines and drugs resulting from sanctions, would make it impossible for Iraq to treat, let alone contain, cholera, typhoid, dysentery and other diseases associated with contaminated water and untreated sewage.
According to one veteran UN aid official in Baghdad, 11 years of deprivation caused by the 1991 war and UN sanctions have seriously undermined the general health of people and their ability to ward off sickness. “People will be far more vulnerable to future attack than before; they are weaker, and they have little resistance,” he said. “It (war) is going to be horrendous for lots and lots of people.” (source)
The other gifts of USA?
More than a decade and a half after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a new study found that babies are being born today with gruesome birth defects connected to the ongoing American military presence there. The report, issued by a team of independent medical researchers and published in the journal Environmental Pollution, examined congenital anomalies recorded in Iraqi babies born near Tallil Air Base, a base operated by the U.S.-led foreign military coalition. According to the study, babies showing severe birth defects — including neurological problems, congenital heart disease, and paralyzed or missing limbs — also had corresponding elevated levels of a radioactive compound known as thorium in their bodies.
This is just the tip of the deadly iceberg of America’s wars, and it’s going to get ugly in Ukraine with dams bursting in air and nuclear plants going boom boom boom.
In 1991, during the first Gulf War, the breaking began. U.S. planes and artillery delivered more than 300 tons of uranium tipped bombs and shells to targets in southern Iraq alone. Residue from these weapons turned into particles that people – including U.S. troops – inhaled. In 2003, more U.S. toxic material rained down on the Iraqi environment.
In September 2002, I saw dying kids in the Baghdad Children’s Hospital. Iraqi doctors had already surmised that only the presence of depleted uranium could have caused such a profound spike in the cancer rates among children.
In June 2005, Dr. Thomas Fasy of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine concluded that data from Iraqi hospitals indicated that depleted uranium’s effect had shown up dramatically in a more than 400% rise in children’s cancer in just over a decade. Uranium ions bond with DNA and this, he said, has also caused a notable leap in children’s leukemia rates along with sharply elevated incidences of congenital birth defects. The United States literally released cancer-causing material into Iraqi air, soil and water. (Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken, Saul Landau)
What more can they say, Blinken, Nuland, Kagan, Biden, Bush, Obama, Lloyd Austin, Colin Powell, even Scott Ritter, that ex-Marine who just loves to talk about war, say about weapons and buildings and dams and toxins? Alas, Ritter loves to talk about what is, and what isn’t off limits in war time, and from Ritter’s interpretation, pretty much everything is ON-Limits for a war: hospitals, news outlets, dams, bridges, warehouses, electric transformers, anything, man, grocery stores and pharmacies.
thank god for eels, marine science, the probing minds of people who want the world to be better
Yeah, I met this guy, Mork X Twain, at an auto parts shop. He was in his planetary orbit, and his home-van was disabled in Newport, at a Burger King parking lot. I told him I’d drive him to his van, try a jump and then from there, who knows? So, there you have it — a van he lives in, going from Newport to the Bay Area, and he said he’s 82, and estranged from his children but has contact with grandkids. The starter was kaput, so I took him to a starter-battery place, and they were reluctant to work on a vehicle that is also a home (their policy) but I talked them into it. Could have been $300, and the tow, that was $85 plus $6 a mile. He lives on Social Security. He wanted to pay me $20 for the help, but I declined.
Mork says he’s writing a collection of essays, tied to the next planetary synergy. China, Russia, Trump and other issues, and he wants a grand socialism, of sorts (he kept bringing up Michael Moore and his movie where he plants a flag in Finland and France cuz of their supposed social programs). He’s pretty smart, and who knows what that life was before 82, before he adopted Mork from Mork and Mindy, X from Malcolm X, and Twain, from Samuel Clemens. He has no phone, and he gave me a PO Box at a copy-postal center in Lincoln City.
I collect stories, and whew, I get embroiled in some interesting narratives of people who are traveling through the slipstream that is life. Mork is one of ten thousand!
I’m also thinking about my sister, Roberta, who hit the pavement near Kamloops, when she was 23, on her way on her new Harley to Tucson. Two other people were on their bikes, and some asshole fell asleep at the wheel, and crossed the line and ended Robbie’s life.
What could have been, and my mom and I went to Hyder, Alaska to be with her boyfriend and friends and spread her ashes in the ocean. I was 20 years old. My younger sister was 10. My old man was on his way to Saudi Arabia. US military.
I’m on this beach (below) a lot, following the tide charts, looking for agates, jasper and plenty of birds. Time to think, time to get caught up in my own slipstream, this aging out of this American Life, and, alas, thinking about just how damaged the world is around me, and then, de facto, how damaged I am now from absorbing plenty of wins and losses, ups and downs.
Then thinking of those eels. Amazing, really: “First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea,” (source, Scientists Track Eels to Their Ocean Breeding Grounds in World-First).
All the way to the Sargasso sea, these reverse anadromous fish ( which migrate from the sea up — Greek: ἀνά aná, “up” and δρόμος drómos, “course” — into fresh water to spawn, such as salmon, striped bass, and the sea lamprey), are actually, catadromous fish who migrate from fresh water down — Greek: κατά kata, “down” and δρόμος dromos, “course”) into the sea to spawn, such as eels.
The point of pointing out these incredible animals, eels, is to point to that human compassion and passion, where people study earth, the amazing life histories of the very animals we take for granted, and those we eat, too. And, I was a kid with my family in the Azores where European eels ended up on their way from UK, say, or Germany, to the Sargasso Sea to breed.
A sharp decline in European eel (Anguilla anguilla) numbers since the 1980s has only made the task all that much harder, and more urgent.
But don’t underestimate these enigmatic creatures. European eels migrate between 5,000 and 10,000 kilometers (3,100 to 6,210 miles) to spawn at sea, after which their larvae drift back towards land and the relative safety of rivers.
Using satellite tags, the researchers behind this latest discovery obtained tracking data from 21 female European eels as they navigated the last leg of their epic journey, southwest from the Azores, a volcanic archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, far west of Portugal.
Contrast these amazing biologists and such, with the Takers, and the absolute amount of trauma they — Homo Sapiens, Homo Consumopithecus, Homo Retailerectus — inflict on our own species. This war here, this famine there, this corporation poisoning this land there, these murderers and thieves doing what they can to be at the top of their manure piles here and there and everywhere.
It’s simple calculus, but Homo Anglo-Saxon-Bellum will do what it has to, with the puppet masters of folks like Nuland, Kagan, Blinken and Super Goy Zionists goading and propping up this actual subhuman, ZioLensky.
So it’s difficult to absorb the news of these neocons, these billionaires, these propagandists, these lockdown impresarios, these AI-VR-AR surveillance panopticons, and then take some respite in the woods or on a beach, but it is a must, to detoxify, like an spiritual elimination diet, finding which inflammatory ingredient in capitalism and Western culture culls joints or flurries brain fog. Imagine, this propaganda-violence, with that comic above in fake military drab, joking, and positing dirty bombs, and the Bucha lies, and bombing markets while helping with a Vogue Magazine layout.
The fog/miasma is great, in what is the 21st Century’s Sadistic, Broken, Chaotic, Propagandistic, Orwellian New Normal, ranging from SARS-CoV2 gain of function hell — that DARPA darling — to the lockdowns and forced vaccinations (sic), ghosting, confiscation of PayPal accounts and money, to stealing billions from Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and now, even, this nuclear saber rattling by the USA and the Dirty Bomb Boy ZioLensky, and the almost complete empty-headed bending over for their masters in Europe.
Here, that Neocon-Neoliberal cloning:
The latest edition of the aforementioned articles was recently released and titled “Renewing America’s Advantages: Interim National Security Strategic Guidance.” Perhaps, the president, who will sign it, is a devout Catholic because the document starts with a confession, which in Judeo-Christian tradition is a necessary step to obtain forgiveness: The U.S. will no longer resort to military coups when it wants to replace a regime in a foreign country.
Biden – or the authors Blinken, his Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who is Robert Kagan’s wife, and Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary of defense, also an Obama alumnus but not a neocon because she is a true conservative from the Henry Kissinger contingent – promises to chart a new route for the U.S. in international politics in the first three pages of the document. But the document then continues describing how the new U.S. administration will follow the beaten path devised by the Bush-Obama-Trump teams.
“I confessed all the sins committed before on behalf of my country, my Lord,” it reads, like a psalm, leaving the U.S. free to commit the same sins for future presidents to repent for. The Biden administration admits that previous administrations failed to use democracy to impact the policies of foreign countries they opposed, falling back on military coups and interventions, often soliciting them.
The U.S. is known for its controversial stance on Latin American coups and we, in Turkey, understand the Latin American people. Biden personally begged the White House not to issue a statement of support for the civilian government on the fateful night of July 15, 2016, hoping that “our boys could still prevail.”
Let bootlickers like CNN’s Fareed Zakaria and the New York Times’ David Brooks cheer the “changes the Biden team started implementing already” as we witness the administration attempt to implement the same military policy in the Middle East.
The document says that “we do not believe that military force is the answer to the region’s challenges,” but Biden’s National Security Coordinator for the Middle East, Bret McGurk, had already begun fortifying the military garrisons he was building in Syria until he was stopped by Trump.
No wonder the 7,000-word new national security bible features the term “diplomacy” 10 times but the tally for “military” is double!
This man, both, in foreground and then Biden Always Seeking the Background, are 21st Century monsters:
Here is one reaction from American Jewry: “We are proud of the fact that this slate of nominees includes multiple Jewish Americans and others whose family history represents the rich tapestry of American society,” the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) said in a statement. “Their understanding of our past will help build a stronger future.”
That response reflects pride that Jews have risen high in the government ranks, and that the new appointees’ understanding of Jewish values will infuse policy.
Contrast that with a tweet from Makor Rishon editor-in-chief Hagai Segal: “There is no need to attribute too much importance to the appointment of Jews in Biden’s administration. There are also a lot of Jews in J Street,” Segal wrote, in reference to the left-wing lobby that has played a leading role in legitimizing and mainstreaming harsh criticism of Israeli policies by both elected and nonelected US officials.(source)
Again, the fog of Western Civilization and the degrading lack of diplomacy and the hard liners in USA running the world aground, and the militaristic attitude, and the racism against Russia/Russians, all of this is important, for sure, and who knows what demographic percentages really mean, what diversity loading can achieve, and what we as thinkers and radicals can do with Anti-Russia people in our midst, the Anti-Chinese attitudes in this society, the amazing Anti-African American racism, and, well, Anti-Semitism, too, which is not even close to being smart about and against Israel’s apartheid state, and their Zionism gone amok. Below, overtly skewed, but then, we do not have open discussions amongst radicals and socialists on what the Biden Cabinet is and what it means to USA and the world.
Very interesting, the power of that occupied land to set the torches ablaze in the world, but these folk never get the mic:
In keeping with Israel’s policy of maintaining WMD ambiguity, Israel “has never made a public policy statement on biological weapons (BW)” and is reluctant to participate in regional and international fora on WMD disarmament. Preferring to address disarmament and arms control in a regional context, Israel has not signed the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Conventions (BTWC), and believes that progress in advancing the treaty’s goals in the region would require significantly improved political stability, discourse, and confidence building in the region. However, Israel has taken steps to strengthen its export control regulations on dual-use biotechnologies and is also examining ways to improve security at sensitive Israeli laboratories. In terms of BW research, development, and deployment, Israel maintains reticence and ambiguity about its activities and capabilities. However, Israeli defensive BW research regularly appears in open publications. The U.S. government offers conflicting assessments of Israel’s BW activities. Given the overall scarcity and ambiguity of official assessments and policy statements, reconstructions of Israel’s BW history, status, and capabilities can provide only partial and interpretive depictions.
Cohen focuses on a two-decade period from about 1950 until 1970, during which David Ben-Gurion’s vision of making Israel a nuclear-weapon state was realized. He weaves together the story of the formative years of Israel’s nuclear program, from the founding of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in 1952, to the alliance with France that gave Israel the sophisticated technology it needed, to the failure of American intelligence to identify the Dimona Project for what it was, to the negotiations between President Nixon and Prime Minister Meir that led to the current policy of secrecy. Cohen also analyzes the complex reasons Israel concealed its nuclear program—from concerns over Arab reaction and the negative effect of the debate at home to consideration of America’s commitment to nonproliferation. Israel and Chemical/Biological Weapons: History, Deterrence, and Arms Control by Avner Cohen. Israel and the Bomb, exactly!
Again, priorities, and amazing how rotting we Homo Sapiens have become, from our decent tribal roots, our hunter and gatherer roots, to this, really, trillions for Blackrock, for Oil, for War, and so much time and lifetime lives expended on the Takers in the Complex — military-medical-pharma-mining-chemical-media-entertainment-legal-ag-prison-surveillance-finance-banking COMPLEX. Crazy days, man, at this point of drinking our own sewer water: “America’s western water crisis is so bad that Colorado is going to start drinking recycled sewage: Colorado’s water quality agency unanimously approved regulating direct potable reuse. It’s pending a final vote in November.” (source)
[Eric Seufert, owner and manager of 105 West Brewing Co., poses for a photo at his brewery room Tuesday, October 18, 2022, in Castle Rock, Colo. He brewed a test batch of beer in 2017 with water from recycled sewage. AP Photo/Brittany Peterson]
Oh, that incredible lightness of being. Ismael, the book, the ape (gorilla):
Why “Mother” Culture?
Culture is a mother everywhere and at every time, because culture is inherently a nurturer—the nurturer of human societies and lifestyles. Among Leaver peoples, Mother Culture explains and preserves a lifestyle that is healthy and self-sustaining. Among Taker peoples she explains and preserves a lifestyle that has proven to be unhealthy and self-destructive.
If culture is a mother among the Alawa of Australia and the Bushmen of Africa and the Kayapo of Brazil, then why wouldn’t she be a mother among the Takers? (To confirm the notion that “culture is a mother everywhere,” check foreign language dictionaries for the word CULTURE. In languages that recognize “masculine” and “feminine” nouns—French, Italian, Latin, and so on—the noun CULTURE is invariably feminine.) [source]
Working tribally, as a community, small scale, cooperative, that is, being LEAVERS, versus totalitarian everything, the TAKERS. Below, November 1998 Daniel Quinn and biologist Alan D. Thornhill met in dialogue with a small group in Houston, Texas, to forge a new tool designed to unseat the unexamined conventional wisdom that typically shapes all discourse on the subject of population. This program, Food Production and Population Growth, is that tool.
What is that end game. Pretending we have hope doesn’t work. Derrick Jensen a long time ago: End Game. If we do not go through a voluntary transformation, what do we do? Imagine all the minerals, metals, plastics, time and energy put into those weapons, and then the dead, the dying, the witnesses bearing the pain. Can civilization be sustainable?
This toxic culture, and trauma, and Gabor Mate does it well explaining how this Taker Culture takes us all down, in his books, and here on The Real News Network, Chris Hedges:
No matter where you stand on Donbass, on Ukraine, on the Nazis, on Minsk II, it’s the trauma trauma trauma that will continue with each generation, young and old and unborn. Deadly.
There’s so much to unpack when it comes to propaganda propagating a society, or in this case, the collective west, that is collectively insane. “Amazing” is not really the operative word, since there are so many allusions to and examples of “good Germans” throughout the collective west, even before Hitler and Bernays and Goebbels and hasbara.
Milgram experiment, remember?
The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question:
‘Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?’ (Milgram, 1974).
Some of the aspects of the situation that may have influenced their behavior include the formality of the location, the behavior of the experimenter and the fact that it was an experiment for which they had volunteered and been paid.
Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.
Authority, fear, bandwagon, transfer, glittering appeal, etc., in the propaganda, Mad Men arena:
Bandwagon propaganda
Card Stacking propaganda
Plain Folk Propaganda
Testimonial Propaganda
Glittering Generality Propaganda
Name Calling Propaganda
Transfer Propaganda
Ad nauseam propaganda (source)
To the point of an apartheid state, Israel, with its deep roots in terrorism against the British and then mass gulag incarceration for the indigenous people, being not only called a great democracy, but one where it has a shadow government in the USA-UK-Canada-EU, in the form of Israel-Firsters of both the Jewish and non-Jewish persuasion.
Israel’s Secret Poisonings in 1948: New article by Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar indicates that well before the botched assassination attempt 25 years ago on Hamas’ Meshal, Israel attempted mass poisoning during the war in 1948 [so, this comes out October 6, 2022, in Haaretz, but there will never be a documentary on Netflix or dramatization on Hulu covering this one of a million stories of Israel’s pogrom]
Now? Check out the flip-side of flipped-out propaganda and truth: “Israel Is Arming Ukraine’s Blatantly Neo-Nazi Militia, the Azov Battalion.” USA-Israel has been for years:
What is going wrong with the so-called mainstream journalism tied to Ukraine is what was/is wrong with the MSM and left-wing narratives around masks, lockdowns, obeying the marching orders of corrupt Big Pharma, and listening without pushback against faux scientists, while allowing for the silencing of medical experts, and public health experts who had/have a different analysis of SARS-CoV2. Hook, line and sinker:
We’ll get to the Covid test for journalists in a minute, but the idea of exacting image management and agnotology and black is white, lies are truth mentality has taken off with algorithms and censoring and the onslaught of Google and Deep State and Corporate State seeding the world with a system of dumb-downing by 1,000,000,000 managed internet hits and mass hysteria.
Zelenskyy has been using 3D imagery to deliver speeches all over the world by using a hologram.
Zelenskyy’s “participation” in world events using a hologram has been reported by several renowned media outlets, as can be seen below.
A hologram is created through holography, a photographic technique which records the light scattered from an object and displays it three-dimensionally.
Images, and the Mass Incarceration Media Management Show:
Oh, these image management boys and girls:
It’s taken off like gangbusters with the few and the mighty controlling 90 percent of “media,” i.e. publishing (including k12 books) and radio and TV and cable and the Holly-Dirt manufacturers of lies, half-truths, multimillionaire thespians who end up acting in politics. All the world’s a stage for coiffing the reality of the poor masses, us, we useless eaters-breeders-breathers-shitters.
Then, with this total absorption of Hollywood images, the marketing ploys, the perceived, planned, hoped for complete transition from citizens to consumers to data zombies to useless to nobodies, we can have this sort of audacity, in my local rag. All full-page rainbow colors and all:
Imagine that, driving in Newport, while seeing all those employee solicitations plastered up on the local Burger King and Pizza Hut billboards, seeking drive-thru help or pizza dough assistants, for $16 an hour plus signing on bonuses and a 30 percent discount on fat, salt and sugar, man.
I’m not sure what the Burger King/Pizza Hut Covidian Madness Requirements are for those teens or Baby Boomers lining up for this gig, to actually get hired with background checks, drug checks, and vax checks, but I know the school district requires SARS-CoV2 experimental jabs, and CDC proof of it, to walk the halls of the school or help those kids on the teether ball court.
Note, the hourly wage for substitutes has been set by a staffing agency working hand in glove with the district — $14.07 an hour. When I was substituting, well, I’d get $18 an hour, and that included pay for a full day if I pinch-hit a couple hours after the morning bell rang. That was $140 for six hours work! Not anymore!
I’d meet the school secretary, get signed in, and then that was it — look at the absent teacher’s notes for the day and then greet the 3rd graders and the math classes in the high schools, music room sub, or special education sub. Even PE and even all sorts of classes K12. Now, the poor souls getting $14 an hour have to jump through the staffing agency hoop, a company out of Tennessee:
And this another aspect of the smoke and mirrors game of Western Society — the staffing agencies, the middlemen and middlewomen just making bank by adding on to all the daily costs of living, of surviving, with their powerful Salesforce apps and servers, all of that, taking over teaching, for the time being, until it all goes on-line, in home “learning”:
Over the last 22 years, we have innovated education staffing to provide dynamic solutions to school districts and professional opportunities to passionate educators. Our team serves over 4.5 million students with a pool of 80,000 substitute and permanent employees throughout 33 states. Internally, the ESS team is comprised of 650 individuals with a passion for education working together to ensure our 900 partner districts experience valuable education every day.
This is the big rip-off, the taxpayers’ spending trillions over the years to establish/prop up public education, schools, buses, college prep programs, all those state colleges and junior colleges, all those school districts throughout the land, so that one day the PT Barnums’ of the world can come in and swoop up and take some munches out of that public-private partnership bs.
I have never seen journalists question this rip-off scheme because (a) journalism has always been on life-support, always there as a town barker and nice guy in the business story realm, and (b) because “going deep” journalistically means going deeper into how immersive the rip-off schemes are in U$A.
I’ve written about my bad times here in Lincoln County, about the spinelessness of ESS, and, well, each criticism of these systems puts another nail into my useless eater-breather-shitter life:
Again, I think the biggest question in maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people?
The problem is more boredom and how what to do with them and how will they find some sense of meaning in life, when they are basically meaningless, worthless?
My best guess, at present is a combination of drugs and computer games as a solution for [most]. It’s already happening…
I think once you’re superfluous, you don’t have power.
– from a transcript at Rielpolitic Alexandra Bruce, “Brave New World: Yuval Noah Harari asks, “What to do with all these useless people?”
Harari goes on to outline a transhumanist vision of the future in which brain-computer interfaces make our footedness in the material world obsolete, human relationships become meaningless due to artificial substitutes, and the poor die but the rich don’t.
Transhumanism, boiled down to its bones, is pure eugenics. It calls itself “H+,” for more or better than human. Which, of course, is what eugenics is all about.
Alarmingly, transhumanist values are being embraced at the highest strata of society, including in Big Tech, in universities, and among the Davos crowd of globalist would-be technocrats. That being so, it is worth listening in to what they are saying under the theory that forewarned is forearmed.
Big issues, no, for the 21st Century of Fourth Industrial Revolution, Web 3.0, Social Impact Bonds, pay for success, blockchains, twinning, and so-so much more that the average gumshoe journalist just can’t dig deep because it will upset the entire playing field they so badly need to get a sense of sanity from the insane. But reporting on insanity is what we need in a time of Transhumanism and Covidian Cults?
Try this out for size:
When you enter the “invest in kids bonds” door knowing there are plans to create asset-backed securities in toddlers and trade them (and perhaps short them) on global markets, the single-minded interrogation of cryptocurrency exchanges and NFT rip-offs feels woefully inadequate. If the stakes weren’t so high, it might be amusing to watch folks who’ve been swimming in the shark-infested waters of financial derivatives for years point fingers decrying crypto-Ponzi-schemers. Calls for better regulation and professed empathy for those who lost their savings to fraudulent digital money schemes ring a bit hollow once you realize many of the panelists’ livelihoods are intertwined with the same financial interests, journalism outlets, and think tanks that were enmeshed in the crash of the global economy via toxic-real estate debt products. These are the same folks who are now in the process of developing the risk modeling, tokenomics, and APIs needed to run the smart “Ricardian” contract, “sustainably resilient,” open-air prison. — Alison McDowell, Wrench in the Gears
Read what the billionaire class and the techno gurus are after, and it’s data, man, tracking us, every blink, twitch, hiccup, burp, step, defecation as well as every purchase, every debt, every desire, to create the ultimate robotics, AI. It’s universal basic chump income blathering, man, and it is that World Economic Forum adage on steroids: “You’ll own nothing but be happy.”
Go here, too, for more:
So, as a real journalist, I have experienced that old time religion of lack of bandwidth, lack of humane reporting, the lack of looking at many sides, and coming out the other end of a story with, well, some solutions that are not the black-and-white game of divide and conquer. False balance, equivocation, relying on diploma-ed and credentialed sources, fear of litigation, the whole nine yards of mainstream journalism requiring an inverted triangle of information; i.e., the lede and important stuff at the top, and the superfluous and unimportant stuff (sic) at the bottom. Of course, it is the stuff at the bottom that IS important.
Case in point: I did the story on 13 Salvadorans found dead in the Organ Pipe National Monument along the US-Mexico border. Newspaperman. Yeah, the hurly burly of all those cops, helicopters, forensics wagons, and a young reporter who happened to have friends working with refugees of El Salvador (and Chile and Guatemala) and who actually did some assistance with the so-called underground railroad. You know, assistance that would have gotten me fired and banned from journalism, even got me arrested, as in, well, helping undocumented folk get from point A to point B in my pick-up truck.
When the grisly scene came into play, and with my background in that work, of course I got a hold of some folk working to assist those coming into the USA for sanctuary and political asylum. Of course, I knew a few academics and authors who had been writing about the dirty schemes of the Salvadoran government, businesses, military and police who were exacting hell on common people, on farmers, and on labor unionists with the material support and intellectual help of USA!
That bottom-of-the-inverted triangle “stuff” was fought over, parsed, edited out, and eventually cut, as the newspapers I worked for was all about the facts, ma’am, if it bleeds, it leads, just get the information from the officials on the spot.
You know, don’t upset the local readers, don’t go into “that” political stuff, and don’t bring in guys and gals from universities all the way from Cochise County, Arizona, to Chicago in your stories?
That was in the early 1980s.
It’s gotten worse. And, I have found over the years that journalists are intimidated by or enamored by the scientists, the reef biologists, the astrophysicists, the dudes and gals mixing up the chemicals, designing the motherboards, and trading derivatives.
Journalists are also tone deaf to history, to backgrounding, and, alas, if the motherships are New York Times and Washington Post and another dozen or so papers sprinkled around the U$A, then that modelling has what has tainted the media, The Press.
How disturbing it is to see the fornication of corporations and media, how disgusting it is to see what is and is not off limits in the reportage arena.
Then, in book publishing? Fewer and fewer books of importance.
This prefatory bit I’m etching in hyperbole before introducing a piece on how the “left” failed the Covid reporting test big time is my angst, for sure, and my ability to see the big picture(s), even if they are holograms and 4 D chessboards in the entire propaganda game. Systems thinking, and while much about capitalism is boorish and raw and just plain usury and scamming and parasitic, there are some complicated and very technical aspects of how finance is moving into your local community, your neighborhood, your lives. BlackRock? Who controls the world?
CEO Larry Fink built a shadow government of former agency officials in a bid to become Hillary Clinton’s Treasury secretary. That didn’t stop Fink from becoming part of the main private-sector advisory organization to Donald Trump until that panel disbanded after Charlottesville.
Alas, though, we’d expect that non-legacy journalists, or those who were once in the Mainstream who are now leftist, supposed anti-monopoly, anti-corporation, skeptical beyond skeptical of any governmental narrative reporters, that they would have peeled back the onion peels on this SARS-CoV2 bioweapon, and then question the funny juiced-up cocktails that we call the mRNA jab.
You’d think that the censoring of doctors, scientists, just plain deep thinkers and activists on the lockdowns, the mandates, the failure to get the data from the Moderna’s and the Pfizer’s on these bizarre untested and rapidly released jabs would pique their interest.
Instead, many went blank, called millions of us as poorly informed, conspiracy theorists, anti-this and anti-that dupes. Imagine that, journalists who question empire, question the United Fruit Company, question authority, Vietnam, Weapons of Mass Destruction, the MIC, FIRE, and who want to look deep into the well that is American Manifest Destiny and Exceptionalism, that they would flip like dying dogs, or either go blank on the virus front, or even patronize those of us who have the gumption to look into the origins of that “virus” and who have the interest in understanding what a great reset is, and how a pathogen and mass hysterical and controlled media on that front can compel people to submit to these fascist things. Typical leftist yammering:
“I got my vaccinations, but I understand that some people who might have personal or whatever beliefs have the right, I guess, to not get forcefully jabbed. Well, yeah, I got the jab because the information just came to me in a dream -haha. I understand science and I understand how much smarter these virologists are, and, heck, a conspiracy of them producing products that would be bad for us, or cause deaths, or that the decent governmental employees would cook up fakes on all this, get real? I get why people might not want to have blood transfusions because of their religion, or not get this vaccine, but for the greater good of all, really, this is a pandemic. We have to follow the science. Sometimes the government-law has to intervene if the Jehovah Witness parent is putting their kids in jeopardy with this inane superstition about blood transfusions and keeping them on life support. Get real, and be part of our collective society.”
So, yes, I only have a BS in marine biology from a long time ago, and, yes, only a masters in Rhetoric and another one in urban and regional planning, and only years underwater diving, and decades as a many-venue journalist, and many decades teaching college, and many years as a sustainability coordinator, and, well, so, if I doubt the narratives around Event 201 and Gates and gain of function lies and what those bio-labs in Canada and USA and even Ukraine and former Soviet Union region are actually up to; and if I delve into many many sources tied to what the hell is going on with corona virus, bats, civets, and SARS, and what the history of Japan’s Unit 731 is, and what the history of biological warfare (ARPA and DARPA) and what is in the minds and labs (Plum Island, Fort Detrick) of U$A, well, again, lefties, liberals, Democrats: “Shut the f#@% up and just do what a good citizen should do . . . your commie countries are doing it too . . . China, Nicaragua, Cuba . . . so take off that tin foil hat and just relax and take it as it is: these scientific things, these mRNA clipping things, this incredible advancement in the science of working with RNA and DNA, well, it supersedes your ability to understand where these big Pharma outfits are coming from. Shut up, and if you doubt any of this, then you are, well, akin to a Trumpian or Q-Anon or just a plain wacko antivaxxer, man. Embarrassing.”
Sure, everything else written about exposures of this bizarre multiple front narrative is verboten:
No Doubting Thomases here:
RNA for Moderna’s Omicron Booster Manufactured by CIA-Linked Company
Since late last year, messenger RNA for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines, including its recently reformulated Omicron booster, has been exclusively manufactured by a little known company with significant ties to US intelligence. (source)
Sinister, man, and I will not belabor the point here citing even a dozen of the hundreds of sources I have read that look at what was being cooked up in labs, from North Carolina to Toronto to Wuhan, and on and on. Bill Gates? The media? Big pharma? Pathogens dropped on the Chinese in Korea in 1950? Right, the record of scientists and MIC working hand in hand is wonderful!
This billionaire is a murder incorporated, continuing criminal enterprise booster:
In October, 2019 Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who, together with his wife, runs the richest and most powerful foundation in the world, co-organized a simulation exercise on a worldwide corona epidemic. Videos were posted documenting the exercise. But intriguingly Gates now denies such an exercise ever took place.
Why? On April 12, 2020, Bill Gates said in an interview to the BBC, “Now here we are. We didn’t simulate this, we didn’t practice, so both the health policies and economic policies, we find ourselves in uncharted territory.”
This is the same person who, just six months before the outbreak of the pandemic, organized a series of four role-playing simulations of a corona pandemic with very high-ranking participants. Event 201 was a simulation of a corona pandemic conducted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and Johns Hopkins University in October 2019.
Participants from the private and public sectors were presented with a scenario, not unlike the one that has unfolded in reality, and discussed what needed to be done. There are official videos of the four meetings and a best-of-video scenario presentation and discussion by the participants, who are members of a pandemic control council in the role play. (source)
Enough already. Here, Mister Harrington’s piece which does question those journalists which I have cited many many times concerning US and global policies that are screwing us over royally. With permission from Harrington, here it is, at Brownstone Institute.
He titles it, “Why did the Left Fail the Covid Test So Badly?”
Here, a few paragraphs:
Like every other important social phenomenon, propaganda regimes have historical genealogies. For example, a very strong case could be made that the ongoing, and sad to admit, largely successful Covid propaganda onslaught under which we now live can trace its roots back to the two so-called demonstration wars (the Panama Invasion and the First Gulf Conflict) waged by George Bush Sr.
The American elites were badly stung by the country’s defeat in Vietnam. In it, they rightly saw a considerable curtailment of what they had come to see as their divine right since the end of WWII: the ability to intervene as they so fit in any country not explicitly covered by the Soviet nuclear umbrella.
And in their analysis of that failure, they correctly alighted to the role that the media—by simply bringing the tawdry and ignoble reality of the war into our living rooms—had played in undermining citizen willingness to engage in such fruitless, costly and savage adventures in the future.
But his piece could have been titled: “Why did the Left, Right, Middle Fail the, now, fill in the blanks, Vietnam-Korea War Test? The Chemical Corporations Polluting Us Test? Why did they, the left, right, middle, fail to go after Carter for mining Nicaragua, for the Gulf of Tonkin Affair, for Vilifying Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader?” Harrington discusses the failure of left-wing writers who have failed to dig deep and parse through the entire reason, pretext for, history of, practice games with, this Planned Pandemic.
It is the failure of actually sticking to your guns; i.e., question EVERYTHING corporations do, sell us, tell us, connive with government to hide from us.
The price? Ending careers, and PayPal shut downs, and bank accounts seized, and endless ghosting and libeling on social media. Infinite social media assaults for anyone who might want to look into SARS-CoV2, the culprits in those biolabs, why the gain of function experiments were continued, why Fort Detrick was shut down months before the media wave of SARS-CoV2 hit? Why there are so many bio-labs at universities in USA and Canada and, well, in former Soviet Union; i.e., Ukraine.
Again, his, Harrington’s, hard-edged words, but real words, with the context, with the history and backgrounding to support what he is saying:
Reading this final flourish while remembering the lamb-like silence of John Pilger in the face of the sustained Covidian onslaught of institutionalized lies and Soviet-grade censorship, one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
And when considering that virtually all those he endorses as exemplars of propaganda-savvy journalism—people such as Chris Hedges, Patrick Lawrence, Jonathan Cook, Diana Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone all of whose work I have frequently and enthusiastically championed over the years—took the same cud-chewing path, the sense of farce only grows.
Go to Harrington’s piece and the piece Pilger wrote which Harrington references. You decide yourself how the left failed the Covid Narrative Badly.
John Pilger, “arguably one of the brightest and more persistent leftist analysts of establishment propaganda,” published “Silencing the lambs: How propaganda works” on his website and then a number of progressive news outlets.
[Leni Riefenstahl, center, filming with two assistants, 1936. (Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)]
Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesnt make a corporation a terrorist.
–Winona LaDuke, “Canadian Oil Companies Trample on Our Rights” by Winona LaDuke, progressive.org. June 18, 2013.
Water is life. We are the people who live by the water. Pray by these waters. Travel by the waters. Eat and drink from these waters. We are related to those who live in the water. To poison the waters is to show disrespect for creation. To honor and protect the waters is our responsibility as people of the land.
–Winona LaDuke, “The Winona LaDuke Reader: A Collection of Essential Writings”, p.55, Voyageur Press (MN)
I just caught the First Voices Radio show with Marley Shebala (Diné and A:shiwi) — investigative journalist, photographer, videographer and blogger. In the Diné way, she is Tó’aheedlíinii (Water Flows Together clan), her mother’s clan, and born for Cha’al (Frog clan), which is her father’s clan. Her mom is from Lake Valley, New Mexico, which is in the eastern part of the Navajo Nation and next to Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Her father is from the Pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico. And so her home towns are Lake Valley and Zuni. “Marley Shebala’s Notebook” is her website where she provides current news coverage of the Navajo government and Navajo communities on and off the Navajo Nation.
She talked about her work as a journalist and activist. There were some comments included near the end from Native folk about exactly what this Columbus-Indigenous Day means. It’s a start, a way to ask Native Americans what it means to be in this country now, and the history of their treatment. Listen to it on this “indigenous people’s day, official federal holiday called Columbus Day!
She talks about uranium on her Navajo land. I know of another source of that uranium that murdered Japanese in World War Two:
“The word Shinkolobwe fills me with grief and sorrow,” says Susan Williams, a historian at the UK Institute of Commonwealth Studies. “It’s not a happy word, it’s one I associate with terrible grief and suffering.” (source).
Here’s a history of Navajo mining. I’ve been there as a reporter a very long time ago.
We have to stop with the idea of creating peace on earth and begin with creating peace with Mother Earth. We’ve tried the first alternative for thousands of years, but look where that has led us; now is the time of the Original Ways, the Native ways, after all … it is coming this way – that we all must make peace with Mother Earth – there is no more altering the native way.
Marley talks about the uranium coming from her tribe’s lands, and how the people of her tribe were told “the uranium would give people jobs.” Nothing about those bombs being developed to drop on two Japanese cities not to win a war, so to speak, but to tell the Soviet Union who is the big, bad toxic kid on the block. She states that when that immolation occurred, the elders and others were totally distraught about what they played a part in, and that that scar is evident today, generations later.
[During the Cold War, the US supported a military coup by Mobutu Sese Seko as it was eager to prevent Shinkolobwe falling into Soviet hands (Credit: Getty Images)]
The story of Shinkolobwe began when a rich seam of uranium was discovered there in 1915, while the Congo was under colonial rule by Belgium. There was little demand for uranium back then: its mineral form is known as pitchblende, from a German phrase describing it as a worthless rock. Instead, the land was mined by the Belgian company Union Minière for its traces of radium, a valuable element that had been recently isolated by Marie and Pierre Curie.
In no other mine could you see a purer concentration of uranium. Nothing like it has ever been found – Tom Zoellner
It was only when nuclear fission was discovered in 1938 that the potential of uranium became apparent. After hearing about the discovery, Albert Einstein immediately wrote to US president Franklin D Roosevelt, advising him that the element could be used to generate a colossal amount of energy – even to construct powerful bombs. In 1942, US military strategists decided to buy as much uranium as they could to pursue what became known as the Manhattan Project. And while mines existed in Colorado and Canada, nowhere in the world had as much uranium as the Congo.
This says it all now, no, about how horrific the Anglo Saxons are, were, and will be, having treated the so called underdeveloped world, which is really the overexploited world, as slaves, lab rats, nobodies.
The Nobodies by Eduardo Galeano
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them–will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who are not, but could be.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.
My own state, Oregon:
For thousands of years, more than 60 Native American tribes lived in Oregon’s diverse environmental regions. At least 18 languages were spoken across hundreds of villages. This civilizational fabric became unraveled in just a few short decades upon contact with white settlers in the 19th century.
And now, the ZioLensky is demanding from those underdeveloped Black nations fealty:
“African nations [must] stand by international law, territorial integrity, and peace,” not only by condemning the strikes on Kiev, Odessa, Dnepr, Kharkov, Rovno, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankovsk, but also by opposing with a UN vote Moscow’s “annexation” of the formerly Ukrainian territories, his message demanded. (source)
Now, again, bears repeating, how the USA is part of that global terror network, working with UK, Five Eyes. Native Americans have paid the ultimate genocidal price of the Anglo Saxons:
The longest war in history, as we see it as America’s real longest war, was the conflict against Indigenous Americans, called the American Indian Wars, which most historians characterize as beginning in 1609 and ending in 1924 or 313 years, mainly over land control.
The USA-UK is in on the killing machines, dropping nukes on civilians, the bombing of civilians in Germany, and Japan.
In February 1942, the British abandoned their “precision bombing” strategy. For the rest of the war, the British concentrated on the systematic widespread destruction of German cities by RAF nighttime air raids, a strategy called “area bombing.” One reason the British took this fateful step was to “dehouse” the German people, which hopefully would shatter their morale and will to continue the war.
The clearest demonstration of the destructiveness of British area bombing occurred in 1943 during three night raids on Hamburg, Germany. On the second night of bombing, something unexpected happened. The fire bombs dropped by 731 RAF bombers started thousands of fires. They merged to create a huge firestorm, sucking up oxygen and generating hurricane force winds. Many who did not burn to death were asphyxiated in underground bomb shelters. The firestorm killed more than 40,000 people in one night.
When the United States entered the war in Europe, its Army Air Corps had better fighter-plane support and bombsights than the RAF. It could maintain its longstanding policy of daytime precision bombing. The Americans believed that the most effective way to destroy the enemy’s ability to continue the war was to strike specific targets like aircraft factories and oil refineries.
Following German rocket attacks against London late in the war, almost 800 RAF bombers bombed Dresden, a center of German art, architecture, and culture. It had been untouched by previous Allied bombing raids. The attack’s stated purpose was to disrupt German troop transports to the Russian front. But at least 35,000 civilians died, mainly by inhaling toxic gases created by the second major firestorm of the war. American bombers killed more civilians the next day when they had difficulty hitting their targets through all the smoke.
Firestorms in Japan
After Germany surrendered in May 1945, America wanted to quickly end the war against Japan. As plans went ahead for a costly invasion of the Japanese islands, Major General Curtis LeMay took command of the bombing campaign against Japan, which had started in late 1944. Having studied British area-bombing tactics, LeMay decided to adopt them in a final effort to force the Japanese to surrender.
On the night of March 9-10, 1945, LeMay’s B-29 bombers attacked Tokyo, a city of 6 million people. Nearly 600 bombers dropped 1,665 tons of fire bombs on the Japanese capital, destroying 16 square miles of the city. The resulting firestorm killed 100,000 people, more than died at Hiroshima or Nagasaki from atomic bombs a few months later. Most of the victims were women, children, and old men. The B-29 crew members put on oxygen masks to keep from vomiting at the smell of burning human flesh.
LeMay’s planes continued firebombing Tokyo and more than 60 other Japanese cities in the following months. He thought he could end the war quickly by destroying Japan’s economy and crushing the morale of the Japanese people. LeMay argued against using atomic bombs. He believed that his firebombing tactics would force Japan to surrender before American forces were scheduled to invade the homeland. (source)
So, there is not much to celebrate when we think about this Anglo-Saxon world dominating (sic), and we know the British were in on bombing the bridge in Crimea, and who did the bombing of the Nord Stream 1 & 2? All part of the treatment of indigenous people in India, Amazon, Congo, Turtle Island, wherever. Russians are their nobodies!
On Becoming Human: This discussion was conducted in 2005 for The 11th Hour by Leila Conners. The discussion covers Trudell’s worldview that encompasses his call for humans to return to their intelligence and their humanity to forge a pathway forward. His responses to the questions now seem prophetic. John Trudell was a Native American author, poet, actor, musician, and political activist. He was the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes’ takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz. During most of the 1970s, he served as the chairman of the American Indian Movement, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After his pregnant wife, three children and mother-in-law were killed in 1979 in a suspicious fire at the home of his parents-in-law on the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Nevada, Trudell turned to writing, music and film as a second career. He acted in films in the 1990s. The documentary Trudell (2005) was made about him and his life as an activist and artist.
Here, the Anglo-Saxons, the USA, out of balance with not just nature, but against humanity!
U.S. laboratories created, developed and operating under Pentagon leadership are scattered throughout Africa, Latin America and practically all the countries that made up the former Union of Socialist Republics. It is estimated that at least 200 biological research laboratories worldwide are financed by Washington.
The presence of U.S. specialists in the construction of chemical and biological weapons, especially in post-Soviet territory, is part of the evidence of the objectives of U.S. administrations to carry out a policy of maximum pressure against the Russian Federation. In these facilities, U.S. agencies are working on creating and modifying pathogens of deadly diseases, for their probable use, either in the military field or in sabotage actions within the broad field of the so-called hybrid wars. Both the UN and various international conventions, aware of their capacity and ease of destruction, have established regulatory agreements to prevent their use and proliferation. However, this decision does not prevent Washington from plaguing the world with research centers aimed at creating weapons of mass destruction (WMD). (source)
And then, on the same community station, I heard a piece about water, man, on the Food Sleuth show, Melinda Hemmelgarn’s show, and I interviewed her a long time ago on my show: Tipping Points: Voices from the Edge (scroll down and see it and listen to it!). “Did you know that bottled water purchases can predict political involvement? Join Food Sleuth Radio host and Registered Dietitian, Melinda Hemmelgarn, for her interview with Manny Teodoro, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author of The Profits of Distrust: Citizen-Consumers, Drinking Water, and the Crisis of Confidence in American Government. Teodoro discusses the connections between the rise of the commercial drinking water industry, distrust in and failure of government, and broader withdrawal from civic life.”
We are talking about just the metal lead in our water pipes. There are over 50,000 water districts in the USA, and they are all messed up, and the poor communities, well, underserved, dirty, toxic, killer water in some cases. And, a trillion dollars to fix those pipes and systems. The worst water is on reservations in the USA. Forget about those overexploited peoples, those indigenous peoples.
Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible.
–John Trudell
“When Columbus got off the boat, he asked us who we were. We said we’re the Human Beings, we’re the People.
Conceptually the Europeans didn’t understand that, it was beyond their conceptual reality. They didn’t see us. They couldn’t see who we were.
Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. It’s five hundred years later and they still can’t see us. We are still invisible.
They don’t see us as human beings, but we’ve been saying to them all along that’s what we are.
We are invisible to them because we are still the Human Beings, we’re still the People, but they will never call us that. They taught us to call ourselves Indians, now they’re teaching us to call ourselves Native Americans. It’s not who we are. We’re the People.
They can’t see us as human beings. But they can’t see themselves as human beings. The invisibility is at every level, it’s not just that we’re tucked away out of sight. We’re the evidence of the crime. They can’t deal with the reality of who we are because then they have to deal with the reality of what they have done. If they deal with the reality of who we are, they have to deal with the reality of who they aren’t.
So they have to fear us, not recognize us, not like us.
The very fact of calling us Indians creates a new identity for us, an identity that began with their arrival. Changing identity, creating a new perceptual reality, is another form of genocide. It’s like severing a spiritual umbilical cord that reaches into the ancestral past.
The history of the Indians begins with the arrival of the Europeans. The history of the People begins with the beginning of the history of the People.
The history of the People is one of cooperation, collectivity, and living in balance. The history of the Indians is one of being attacked and genocide, rather than a history of peace and balance. The history of the People under attack, the Indians, in an evolutionary context, is not very long, it’s only five hundred years.
The objective of civilizing us is to make Indian history become our permanent reality.
The necessary objective of Native people is to outlast this attack, however long it takes, to keep our identity alive.”
W.E.B. DuBois: ‘To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.’
Patrick Duffy of ‘Dallas’ Fame Lists Oregon Ranch for $14 Million
Imagine a world where smart cohesive thinkers come together and work with these multimillionaires and get some break on the property and then get a community going there: people who want to learn how to farm-raise animals; how to preserve foods; how to construct tiny homes and microhomes; how to grow food; how to heal; and how to bring together so many types of people who want to heal trauma and get better. I am not just talking about those rough sleepers you might run into, AKA, homeless, many times men of all ages, opting to get off the bureaucratic grid (they too are humans and global citizens, lest we forget). Not just folks who are really down and out, or who just want to be left alone. Although many of those would fit well on a property like this — a river there, ponds, fields, trees, and central outbuildings.
Includes 49 Acre Campus with 6+ Buildings totaling approx. 130,000 SF:
Expansion Hall- Administration Building with Auditorium, Classrooms and Offices
Harmony Hall- Girl’s dorm with 67 rooms, 7 offices, lounge, chapel, commercial kitchen, dining room, bath suites, etc. and attached 3-bedroom Dean’s house
Devotion Hall- Boy’s dorm with 49 rooms (19 rooms need sheetrock finished and painted), apartment with kitchen, bath suites, rec room, lounges, etc. and attached 5-bedroom Dean’s house
Gymnasium/Music Building with Stage
Science Classroom Building with Library
Industrial Arts Building with Auto Shop, Wood Shop and Welding Shop
Extensive Updates during current ownership include:
Administration Building has newer metal roof, updated windows, new insulation, remodeled auditorium and meeting rooms, new HVAC, electrical service and lighting
New windows, high efficiency hot water system, new HVAC, new kitchen appliances and walk-in refrigerator, insulation, paint, lighting and carpeting in Harmony Hall (Girl’s dorm)
New windows, insulation in 49 rooms plus new sheetrock in 30 rooms of Devotion Hall (Boy’s dorm)
New and repaired roofs and new electrical services
Domestic water system and sewage system for campus
Includes separate 4.69 acres (Tax Lot 1301) with Spring and water rights– domestic water source for campus
Adjacent 151 +/- acres well suited for low density residential development with 30 LA water co-op certificates
Vineyard soils & Beautiful Views
South Fork Hill Creek flows through property
Rural location approximately 14 miles south of Hillsboro near Gaston
That was August 2021. I have had many intersections with places like that, where there is raw land, established multiple room buildings, with commercial kitchens, and gardens, even equestrian building, rivers and springs, and alas, up for sale, and, in the scheme of capitalism and the end rot of nonprofit do-gooders and the inability to get things going that would actually help people, including adults and families who have faced housing challenges, and then also bringing together students, and retirees, and others to create a triple-healing community where people live, eat, think, create and recreate together, yes, IMPOSSIBLE in capitalism. In a wooded and riverside area, throughout the land, thousands of locales, ready for a new paradigm!
There are literally tens of thousands of opportunities like the one listed above, and also that 395-acre ranch Duffy has put on the market.
In capitalism, using county coding as a blunt anti-do hammer, in the scheme of things, getting anything this creative off the ground is almost impossible. You know, getting maybe art students and social worker majors, journalism majors, filmmakers, construction and engineering students, nursing students and others out there to do theses in situ with the very people and situations they may have studied.
Encampments, visiting elders programs, and permanent housing in the form of tiny homes, with tons of support, tons of community connectivity, and then, of course, mental and physical health practitioners, nurtritionists, farmers, and construction gurus on the spot assisting people to learn how to do for themselves.
The template is easy to produce, and that letter I wrote to Jeff Bezos’s ex, MacKenzie Scott Tuttle, in reference to another property for sale in Oregon, 200 acres, for $7 million. Now, just replace that location with this new location:
+–+
Dear MacKenzie Scott-Tuttle:
RE: Satellites of Tierra Firma – Some Look to Mars and the Moon, We Look to Soil Here
& Medicine Wheel of Healing, Growing, Learning, Living
People and land need healing which is all inclusive – holistic.
Reverence is an emotion that we can nurture in our very young children, respect is an attitude that we instill in our children as they become school-agers, and responsibility is an act that we inspire in our children as they grow through the middle years and become adolescents.
— Zoe Weil, p. 42, Above All Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times
Oh, the naysayers tell me and my cohorts to not even try to break into the foundation you run, that this concept of having Mackenzie Scott Tuttle even interested in becoming a placeholder for an idea, and for this land that a group of visionaries see as an incubation collective space for dreams to become reality.
We place our hopes in your ability to read on and see the vision and plans driving this solicitation, this ask. And it is a big ask.
This is figuratively and literally putting the cart before the horse. Here we have 200 acres, and the vision is retrofitting this center that is already there, Ananda, into a truly holistic healing center, youth run, for a seven generations resiliency and look forward ethos of learning to steward the land, learning to grow the land, toward biodynamic farming, all mixed in with intergenerational wisdom growing.
We are seeing this, as stated above, as a medicine wheel. A circle of integrative thinking, education, experimentation and overlapping visions of bringing stakeholders from around the Pacific Northwest (and world) into this safe harbor. There are already facilities on this property as you can see from the real estate prospectus. There are 120 rooms in a great building. There are outbuildings, a gymnasium, barns, and spring water.
It is unfortunately up for sale, and the danger there is a developer with a keen eye to massive profits and turning a spiritual and secular place of great healing and medicine wheel potential into “dream homes” for the rich.
Good land turned into a gated community? We are asking your philanthropy to take a deep dive into helping put this property on hold from those nefarious intentions and allow our group to develop this circle of healing – education across disciplines, elder type academy mixed with youth directed programs; farming; food production; micro-home building and construction facility; trauma informed healing.
Actually, more. Think of this as a community of communities.
Young People Need Hope, a Place (many places) and Leadership and Development
So many young people are done with Industrial and Techno Capitalism. They know deep down there is more to a scoop of soil than a billion bacteria, and they want to be part of healing communities.
We are proposing the Foundation you have set up invest in this property, as a placeholder for our development plan – actually it is an anti-developer plan. This property will be scarfed up for a steal by land and housing developers who want McMansions out here in this incredible eco-scape. Just what we do not need in the outlying areas of Portland. Or in so many other locations across this country.
We are a small group ready to do what we can to get food growers and producers at the table to invest in intellectual and sweat and tears capital to make this 200 acres work as a living community of new farmers, people living and learning on the property, incubating ideas for, we hope, to include a micro-home building project, crops, vineyards, learning centers for farming and preserving, marketing and engaging in food healing.
We come at this with decades around food systems, learning from Via Campesina/o or Marion Nestle, Alice Waters, Winona LaDuke, Rachel Carson. We believe in biomimicry, that is, learning how nature settles scores, survives and thrives. We come at this as deeply concerned about ecological footprints, life cycle analyses, the disposable culture and the planned and marketed obsolescence.
We are also coming at this as educators – earth teachers, who know classrooms in prison like settings, with rows of desks, do not engender creative and solutionaries– young people ready to go into the world, even a small community, with engaged, creative and positive ways to deal with climate chaos and the impending shattering of safety nets, including biological and earth systems “nets” and “webs.”
This property is unique, as all of our earth is. This is firstly Kalapua land, first, and that is the Grande Ronde and Siletz, as well as the Atfalsti, too. We call it Gatson, near Hillsboro, Oregon, but the land is the essence of the spirit givers of this continent before “discovery.”
Rich, in the wine country of the new people to this region, this land is about applying our ethos and yours, Ms. Scott-Tuttle, toward a real healing, a real stewardship and real intergeneration ethos around carrying the wisdom of tribes and growers and educators to the youth. We believe women are at the center of many of the themes already listed – farming, educating, healing, human stewardship.
Think of this project as the cart before the horse because the old system, the horse, was always the money, the source of power, and with power comes strings attached. The people involved in this project are looking to have a multistoried community of farmers, learners, youth learning trades and people skills, as well as elders, both Native and new arrivals, to understand that a farm is more than that, as well as a vineyard is more than the sum of the grapes. It is about a reclaiming of the sacred – soil, air, photosynthesis in a truly sustainable fashion.
The only “green washing” we can imagine this project will carry forth is the washing of the greens, the other harvests, in tubs of clear spring water.
Some of us on this project have traveled to other parts of this continent, and spent time with coffee growers and understand that shade grown coffee and beyond fair trade are the only elements to a truly fair and equitable system. Train the people of the land, who are the true stewards, to not only grow, but to roast and market the bounty. Grow the community with water projects, irrigation, schools, and globalized sharing of people, visitors.
This project needs a placeholder, to keep the land out of the insane real estate market. We will do the rest, we solutionaries. There are so many growers and investment angels who want to be part of the Seventh Generation solution.
Clearly, the lessons for people to be in this 200 acre community, farm-soil-healing satellite, are lessons you, Ms. Scott-Tuttle, the fiction writer, know, which you capture deftly with Luther Albright. The world for young people in the Pacific Northwest is that crumbling home and crumbling dam of Albright. The healing we need is more than the structures and infrastructure. It is inside, at the heart of the soul of imagination. Some of us on this project are soliciting from your charity a placeholder purchase of the property are tied to the arts, believing STEAM is the only way forward, and that S.T.E.M. is lifeless and dangerous without the A – arts. We believe the true voice of people are those who believe in asking “what should we do” rather than what is currently on superchargers – “What Can We Do?”
We realize that for many young people, politics have failed them. Many youth I speak with and work with, believe this country is in the midst of an empire of chaos in steep decay. Alternatives to the decay is building communities that would fit the model here on 200 acres – agroecological farming; nutritional centered living; housing; long-term care assistance; youth directed entrepreneur projects; bringing in local and state businesses leaders to be part of a design from the grassroots up.
The catch for most of the youth we have engaged is — to paraphrase and level a composite point, “We are ruled by an elite class of individuals who are completely out of touch with the travails of the average American.” This simple statement is packed full of context and frightening reality for millions of students and adults who feel disconnected and neutered by both government agencies and corporate policies.
First, who wants to be “ruled” by anyone? That we have this class system of elite, middle managers, the elite’s high ranking servicers, and then, the rest of the citizens, the so-called 80 percent who have captured less than the overall 10 percent of “wealth” in this country. The very idea of an elite out of touch, or completely out of touch speaks to an ignorance that is dangerous to the world, to the 80 percent, and also speaks to a possible planned ignorance. That we have millions of amazing people, to include nonprofits, community-led organizations, educational institutions, journalists, and others, who can speak to what those “travails” are, and yet, the elites failing to grasp those challenges, or failing to even acknowledge them, this is what many believe is the decay of this society.
This may not sit well with you or your philanthropy, but we as a group have dozens of years experience working with K12, higher ed, farming groups, social services/mutual aid movements, and have systems thinking in our backgrounds, and we underscore youth and community-driven projects and designs. This medicine wheel/circle land trust we are asking you to consider with a follow up meeting, well, this is the only way to a model-driven set of safety nets to move into some challenging times for this Empire in a world that is no longer USA centric.
We are solutionaries, that is, we look for solutions by taking apart problems and then applying holism and deep experimentation in design, but using tried and proven systems that do work.
Healthy food, healthy relationships to culture, people, nature, healthy work, worthy work, with an eye always on the arts. Just as a farming and tiny home community, where biodynamic farming and food preserving and from nail to roof to complete tiny home design are part and parcel the key elements for this community to thrive under, well, there are no better classrooms and transferable skills.
Some of us have seen youth and adults learn the crafts needed to design, plan buildings, and market tiny homes that would be used to seed communities that are, again, centered around farming, centered around healing, centered around Native American healing, and local community values. A young woman who finishes the hands-on learning of building a tiny home – with windows, skylights, plumbing, furnishings, electricity ready, all of that which a home entails – is a remarkable, valuable person. All those skills, again, like a medicine wheel, teach deeper lessons, and transferable skills.
This is what this property would also “house.”
All Tied Together – School, Outdoors, People, Action, Solving Food Insecurity and Housing
The should is an educational-farming-entrepreneur-solutions incubator on these 200 acres. Proving that this could be one of a thousand across the land. There are literally thousands of similar properties around the US, within their own cultural-community-ecological-historical milieus, but again, this project is one that Luther Albright would have thrived inside as a “New Engineer for Growing Communities,” as opposed to river-killing dam builder.
Our earthquake is here now, with all measure of tremors and aftershocks — that is the climate chaos, wildfires, food insecurity, and alas, the New/New Gilded age of deep inequities that are criminal, as you well know, Ms. Scott Tuttle.
Here, the cart (before the horse): this amazing collective piece of land and buildings with a multiversity of spiritual under girders . The horses are ready, but they need the cart, the home, the fabric of incubation. Those stallions and mares are engaged, ready, who are willing to take a leap of faith here and risk being outside the common paradigm of predatory and consumer-driven capitalism that has put many millions in a highly precarious position.
It’s amazing, the current system of philanthropy which forces more and more people to beg for less and less diverse money for fewer and fewer truly innovative ideas. Funding a project like this is a legacy ad-venture, the exact formula we need (scaled up to a 1,000 different locales) to break the chains of Disaster and Predatory Capitalism. We need that “capital,” the cart, to help those stallions and mares to break for the field of ideas and fresh streams of praxis.
There are any number of ideas for sustainability communities. Co-ops, growers groups, or mixed communities for young and old to exchange knowledge, capacity, growth, sweat equity — called intergenerational living. This is about a pretty inventive suite of concepts and practices:
learning spaces, inside and outside
buildings to develop micro home (unique, easily packaged and ready to put together) manufacturing and R & D
food systems – farming of sustainable food, herbs and those vines
husbandry
learning food systems, from farm to plate
ceramics, painting, music, dance, theater and writing center
speakers’ bureau
farmers, restaurateurs and harvesters with a stake in the community
healing center
Youth directed outdoor education and experiences
sustainability practicums for students
low income micro home housing
day care center, early learning center
How does this make any sense to a billionaire, who has devoted her life to “giving away” half of her wealth in her lifetime? Well, we see this project – this land-property – as a legacy for many of the avocations and interests (passions) you have articulated over the years. Your vision and commitment to education and women-centered projects are admirable. This is one of those projects.
There is that emotional and sappy Movie, Field of Dreams, and the statement – “if you build it, they will come.” We have found that over the years teaching in many places – Seattle, Spokane, Portland, El Paso, Auburn, Mexico – that young people and nontraditional students want mentoring, leadership and the tools to be mentors and leaders. They need the cart before the horse can herald in the new ideas, and the new way to a better future. If the classroom and master facilitator allows for open growth, unique student-led ideas and work, well, that person has BUILT the field of dreams from which to grow.
There are so many potentials with this project, and it starts with the land, holding it as a Scott-Tuttle placeholder. From an investment point of view, as long as you have people wrangling other people and professionals to get this satellite of sanity, the medicine wheel with many spokes radiating out and inward, the property increases in monetary value. Land is sacred, but just as sacred are the ideas and the potential that land might germinate and grow. It is the reality of our country – too few control too much. We see it in the infamous “Complex” – not just military, but, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Media, Big Business, Big Education, Big Medicine, as well as private prisons, for profit social services, AI , and Big Tech, so called Surveillance Capitalism. Who in the 80 percent has the funds to purchase a $7 million project?
Big ideas like this cooperative land medicine wheel (a first of many satellites) might be common, but the web of supportive and cohesive things tied to this property is unusual, to say the least. With the failing of small businesses throughout the area, with the food insecurity for women, children and families, with the housing insecurity, added to debt insecurity — with all those insecurities young and old face, this project could be the light at the end of many tunnels. We have connections to Oregon Tilth and Latinx Farmers, and large biodynamic vineyards. We have connections to women’s veteran groups, to aging in place experts. We have connections to trauma healers and growers and interested folk who know construction and design. Additionally, the Pacific Northwest, from Puget Sound to Gold Beach, OR, is full of innovators, and those include the dozens of colleges and universities just in these two states – Oregon and Washington. We intend to trawl for investors – farms, food purveyors, wineries, restaurants, schools and various college programmers – to put into this project. A soil plot to test perennial wheat, a al the Land Institute, to Amory Lovins, Novella Carpenter, and so many more, finding a place of integrated living, ag, permaculture and ever-evolving cultural understanding of the finite planet we are on.
We are hopeful, even under the current Sixth Extinction.
It is telling, this entomologist and educator’s perspective after three decades of teaching:
Diana Six, an entomologist for 30 years who teaches at the University of Montana, took her students to Glacier National Park on a field trip and reported the following:
Life doesn’t just deal with this. When I went up Glacier with my students a few weeks ago, the flowers were curling up. At some of the lower elevations, glacier lilies were shriveled, lupins didn’t even open. The flowers should extend for another three weeks and they’re already gone. Any insects or birds that depend upon them, like bees or hummingbirds, are in trouble, their food is gone. Bird populations have just baked… People seem to think of extinctions as some silent, painless statistic. It’s not. You look at birds that can no longer find fish because they’ve moved too far off shore. They’re emaciated; they’re starving to death. We are at the point that there’s nothing untouched.
How contradictory and illustrative that this student experience took place in a “protected national park.”
Referencing how climate change impacts life, Diana said:
Somewhere along the way, I had gone from being an ecologist to a coroner. I am no longer documenting life. I’m describing loss, decline, death.
We are hopeful that our youth can document life on this Medicine Wheel Land Satellite, and instead of describing “loss, decline, death,” this one satellite can help individuals to describe resurgence, restoration, holism, and growth. A model, like the one we propose, could be the incubator and inspiration for other similar projects throughout the land. So many empty buildings, so many abandoned farms, so much good land about to be grabbed up by McMansion developers, or those who have no vision toward a resilient and communitarian existence.
We are thinking of a medicine wheel since so many people can utilize the Farm, from horse therapists, to gardening as trauma healers; from alternative medicine experts, to restaurants with a connection to growers. This is Terra Firma Robusta, for sure, with so much potential to integrate a suite of smart, worldly, localized and educational programs, permanent, long-term, and short in duration. This would be the linchpin of inspiration, an incubator for similar projects, and we’d make sure that the Philanthropy you head up would be in some form of limelight – imagine, a billionaire placing a property with a deep spiritual history into a land trust of perpetuity. I know another billionaire has purchased farmland and is now the largest farm land holder in the US, but this one here we propose would fit an entirely different model, having nothing to do with industrial farming, genetic engineering and monocultures. Like all good societies, the cornucopia of life and backgrounds and people and land is what makes them dynamic, healthy and resilient, as well as fair.
We propose a grand idea, but we need that field of dreams, that field, that farm, before we can engage a hundred people to be part of this medicine wheel of land healing and hope.
Please let our team discuss this further. Truly, we have both the passion and persistence to get this Medicine Wheel of Healing Farm Community to an unimaginably vibrant level. Will you be part of our field of dreams?
Sincerely,
Paul Haeder
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Here it is, yet more second, third and fourth homesteads for the stars, up for sale!
A therapy pool and then a sweat lodge somewhere on the property? Think big, man.
Get garbage warriors out there, man:
Here’s the photo layout for this place: on a website called, Mansion Global.
Imagine, the Rich and Famous, a site (there are hundreds) to sell mansions, castles, private jets, yachts, and more.
Getting access to MacKenzie or Duffy or any of these star chamber superstars is one issue, but then getting through the red tape, the endless litigation, all the NIMBY retrogrades complaining, and really, getting people to sign onto a community-centered project, one where a lot of sweat equity is expelled, it is so so tough in predatory, dog-eat-dog capitalism. Getting the project off the ground, and getting the resources to keep it sustainable, well, that is the $1 Billion Question.
We are scattered, atomized, factionalized, silo-centric, contrarian. Hyper competitive, dog-eat-dog, and letting the rich and the connected and the bureaucracies of bad government run things, most people have no center, no ability to move along great ideas and projects.
This is primo property for any multilayered approach to trauma healing, getting young and old to do something as in a going concern tied to making tiny home kits, growing organic food, etc.
As they purchased adjacent properties over the years, they acquired eight more houses and several pastures that are rented out to local ranchers. One of the homes was demolished, six are rented to tenants, and one is used as the ranch manager’s house, according to Mr. Duffy.
“We became a working ranch but not with our own animals,” he said. “It added the most beautiful, bucolic sense of the place.”
A homestead that dates back over 100 years still sits at the entrance to the property, he said. In it he found an old stove, which he restored and put in the main house. But the majority of the roughly 390 acres remains wilderness. The property now has approximately 2 miles of river frontage, according to Mr. DeVries.
These villages or centers are easy to build, in the ten or twenty houses clusters, or bigger. But imagine, on land, growing food, working in soil, campfires at night.
Again, not just chronically homeless, but people who are about to be homeless. Imagine an amazing community, a pop-up village, a sort of “charter town,” without the negative implications of “charter anything” involved. For every 100 households of renters in the United States that earn “extremely low income” (30 percent of the median or less), there are only 30 affordable apartments available, according to a 2013 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. It is getting worse, and people are burned out on capitalism. Easily designed, that mock up below. Imagine that as one of several nodes on the Duffy Property.
Efforts to break through the red tape and raise money to house the homeless almost always pay off for a community. Even the most expensive tiny-house projects—such as a new, ambitious $6-million campaign to build a 200-person tiny-house park this year in Austin, Texas—can’t rival the cost of homelessness to taxpayers, which was more than $10 million per year in Austin, for example, as YES! reported in December 2013.
“Chronically homeless people—people who have disabilities and are homeless for long periods of time—can be very expensive to systems of public care,” explains Roman. In 2007, the National Alliance to End Homelessness compiled three studies showing that it costs the same or less money to provide permanent housing as it does to allow people to remain homeless. In Denver, Colo., a housing program for the homeless reduced the costs of public services (including medical services, temporary shelter, and costs associated with arrests and incarceration) by an estimated $15,773 per person per year, saving taxpayers thousands of dollars.
Here, just one organization:
In a wooded area behind Ithaca’s commercial strip, there is a location known as “the jungle.” Here, individuals experiencing homelessness gather and make what home they can. Second Wind’s journey began when our founder, Carmen Guidi, started to build relationships with the residents, bringing pizza and listening to their stories. It was when one of his new friends, who had been asking for help, committed suicide that Carmen knew he needed to do more. Acting as an advocate, Carmen was able to find housing for all but nine men.
With his own money, Carmen purchased campers to provide shelter for the men who were still in The Jungle come winter. He placed these on his land and paid for the utilities, but it became clear that living in campers in the winter was still uncomfortable and very expensive. Through a process of collaboration, Second Wind evolved from campers to cottages and became an official 501(c)(3). Programs have expanded to include a house for women and a formalized Homeless Crisis Alleviation team. In 2020 the “cottages” was dropped from our DBA to better represent all that Second Wind does. Each of the projects we manage is further described on their own pages under the “About Us” tab.
Second Wind’s vision is to house and walk with people towards restored lives. To this end, SW seeks to improve the relationships with self, family, and the larger community. Accomplished by our mission to
Provide housing, support, and encouragement to homeless and at-risk people in our community.
Mentor residents in life skills needed to reintegrate into society and, when possible, family life.
Practice living as good neighbors by building relationships amongst residents and the surrounding community.
Sustain relationships and support residents who have moved on from Second Wind.
Future projects include an on-site community center, a multi-unit house for women, and a multi-bay work garage.
Here, a higher end way to age and die in place.
Even some churches are attempting to get into the act!
Churches across the US are building tiny houses on spare land to accommodate homeless people, The Associated Press reported.
A number of faith leaders are working with nonprofits and affordable housing organizations to create the micro homes. They typically have a single bedroom and a small kitchen area and are being built on vacant land belonging to churches.
Tiny homes are becoming an increasingly popular solution to help tackle the homelessness crisis. More than half a million people were homeless in the US in 2020, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ most recent report, and 70% of those were individuals. (source)
Of course, that was 2020, and now we see Europe in the sewer for what has been happening with the U$A dictating how EuroTrashLandia will slide into more and more recession, joblessness, and homelessness. Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need
Yes, adults, seniors, so to speak, are in very precarious positions:
Over the years, the number of homeless seniors aged 65 years and older in the U.S. has been increasing. Homelessness among older people aged 50-60 years is also increasing. Not all seniors have enough income and money saved to pay for a safe and stable place to live and other necessities such as food, utilities, and medication.
Homeless elders can face many challenges—especially health issues. Many don’t have enough money or insurance coverage to go to the doctor and get treatment. Some don’t trust health care and social services providers. Accessing public assistance programs can also be daunting to homeless elders. Some get discouraged by application processes, have a hard time getting to places to receive care and services, and refuse help.
The key to stable housing for older people and seniors is preventing eviction. State and local departments of social services often help with housing emergencies for the elderly and by providing housing for low income seniors. In many communities, religious organizations help homeless senior citizens by providing emergency housing assistance, case management, and money management services to maintain housing and prevent homelessness.
And,
In May of 1990, the Citizens Committee for the Homeless, a Santa Cruz County nonprofit, began a new project by opening the gates of an organic garden on Pelton Avenue.
The Homeless Garden Project would provide job training and meaningful work in a therapeutic environment. The Homeless Garden Project began as a place to provide sanctuary, refuge, and meaningful work within the healing space of the organic farm. Blossoming over time and furthering the project’s benefits, the farm harvests have provided an opportunity to support our vision and community through our CSA program, farm stand, and crafts, which are sold at our local Santa Cruz stores and on-line.
We are genuinely humbled by the profound transformations our trainees make in our program, and the generous support provided by our community. Our purpose-driven nonprofit has proven to be a benefit to our neighbors in need, our community, and our environment. We couldn’t have done this without the continual generosity and support of our donors, volunteers, and CSA members. We are so grateful for each one of you.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about bats. A few dozen have been flying around our Waldport, Oregon, Cyprus tree: California Myotis, Fringed Myotis, and the Big Brown Bat. Near White Salmon, WA, I have seen dozens of Silver-Haired Bats, flying low to the ground on 20 acres we own.
This creature accounts for almost a third of all mammal species (more than 1,400). Bats are both talisman and a bright memory in these dark times.
Recall: Bats and the SARS-CoV2 used to be the talk of the town, beginning March 2020. More than 90 coronas have been found in bats. (The origins of SARS-CoV2 is even speculated recently by writer and thinker, Jeffrey Sachs as a lab origin virus.)
Background: I was in Vietnam years ago to help survey forest and jungle.
However, I’ve had bats in my life since age six months. In the Azores, there is one native bat. My sister and I lived with parents who worked at the Air Force base. We were on the island for five years.
Bats roosted in the rafters of the garage where my father stored our 1957 Chevy.
Our nanny had a bent-over fisherman uncle who let us play on his potato farm. In the evening, with the rice, tuna, warm bread and big glasses of Sangria for the adults and blood-red grape juice for the kids, we’d sit outside and watch a thousand bats echolocate above the forest.
One day Gloria’s tio showed us a big green glass jar with a tin lid.
I saw a creature flapping around. He showed me my first bat up close. I was three. I learned later, when I really got into bats, that species — Azores noctule (Nyctalus azoreum), the only endemic mammal on the island.
Another bat lives on the islands — the greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) – but this species is not native, first arriving as a stowaway on cargo ships.
For more than six decades, I’ve been fascinated with this species, Chiroptera, which means “hand-wing.” Imagine the bones in a bat’s wing working like those of the human arm and hand, but bat finger bones are super elongated and connected by a double membrane of skin to form “the wing.”
In the 1990s, I lived in bat caves with British and Vietnamese scientists working on biological surveys, called transects.
We climbed limestone mountains, looking for caves. We worked near Laos.
The 23-year-old Scotsman who led the bat survey was dubbed “wild man.” I was 36 years old, and the rest of the team was much younger.
Except for Hanoi biologist, Dr. Viet (37).
I was in Vietnam the same age my cryptographer father was there as a Big Red One CW4. He was shot when the helicopter he was in came under fire. The pilot took one between the eyes. My old man’s bullet ended up two inches from his heart.
He never liked talking about Vietnam. By the time I made it to Vietnam, he had been buried, the victim of a heart attack.
I know he would have been blown away that his son was traveling in Vietnam with scientists. He listened to my stories of scuba diving in Mexico, Baja and Central America with a kind of awe.
He liked my yarns.
I ended up in places in Vietnam he never explored. I hiked, rode in buses and boats, and then did the entire length of the country on a motorcycle. Dr. Viet was a guide for me, navigating me through the hundred plus Vietnamese words I knew.
Today, I am wrestling with fundamental questions as a writer and teacher. Working with words, concepts, spirituality, philosophy and aging, I know why people are seeking solitude and a reimagining of where they are going the rest of their lives.
Bats also bring me to philosophical reflection. I just finished a 1974 essay, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” by Thomas Nagel. He’s looking at perception, and how as a species, sight-abled humans have a lack of words and mental constructs getting a blind person to understand the color red.
The same goes for scientists attempting to know what it is “to be” and “to experience” like a bat.
If you have been with bats in caves like I have, you know they are alien forms.
Nagel: “But bat sonar, though clearly a form of perception, is not similar in its operation to any sense that we possess, and there is no reason to suppose that it is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine. This appears to create difficulties for the notion of what it is like to be a bat.”
The same could be said about people. How impossible it is for me to know what it is to be a woman and to experience pregnancy and childbirth. Conscious experience is “a widespread phenomenon.”
Here I am, in a time of corona, lockdowns, mandates, vaccinations, thinking about bats. And the conscious experience. Yet I can’t really be in the bat’s world, or experience it. We can’t know what it’s like to be a 1,000 year old bristlecone pine. Or to be a European bee in a hive.
I’m reminding myself daily to follow this admonition: “Before I judge a man, I need to walk a mile in his shoes.” Or, before calling a bat “vermin,” people need to image what it’s like to fly using sonar flapping with hand-wings.
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Aside Note: Oct. 24-31 is Bat Week, an annual, international celebration of the role of bats in nature! If your thing isn’t bats, many groups and organizations also recognize these for the month: Adopt A Shelter Dog; Antidepressant Death; Breast Cancer Awareness; Celebrating The Bilingual Child; Down Syndrome; Dyslexia; Eat Better, Eat Together; Emotional Intelligence; Global Diversity; Head Start Awareness; Health Literacy; Long-Term Care Planning!
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In Oregon, there are 15 bat species, and eight of those are Oregon Conservation Strategy Species. Strategy Species are those having small or declining populations, are at-risk, and/or of management concern.
In sister state south, California, count that as 25 species of bats. Additionally, there are 45 species of bats in the United States and Canada. Of those California Dreaming animals, bats 24 of these are in Southern California, which has the largest and smallest known bats found in the United States.
Bats can can eat their weight in insects nightly. They are incredible pollinators. No, the cheetah isn’t the fastest mammal. The Brazilian free-tailed bat can reach speeds up to 100 mph, making it by far the fastest mammal on Earth.
That flying fox (genus Pteropus) also called a fox bat, includes about 65 species mostly found on tropical islands from Madagascar to Australia and Indonesia and in mainland Asia. Most species are primarily nocturnal. Flying foxes are the largest bats, some attaining a wingspan of 1.5 metres (5 feet) with a head and body length of about 40 cm (16 inches).
I was under a papaya tree in Vietnam. It was dusk. I was in shorts and barefooted. I had just come down from an alpine forest area with our crew. Lots of cobras on the path heading back to camp. I had a huge bowl of super strong tea, sipping it while listening to the forest churn out amazing nighttime symphonies.
Civets, amphibians, gibbons, odd barking from the deer endemic to Vietnam. Insects. And the guys and gals around a smokey fire talking, and some zither music from a radio. I was the snake guy, and assisted with the bat studies. I had just caught a green viper and photographed it twenty different ways. The Vietnamese scientists wondered what sort of wild man I was as I jumped up and down limbs to wrestle these snakes, towel wrapped around wrist, another around my neck, ready to pin head down with my special short stick.
It was a long half a year, with lots of rain, mud, many river crossings (I was also one of the logistics guys, taking one of our three motorcycles into 26 river crossings to a village 10 miles down the mountain for tuna, cigs, beer and ramen, eggs, rice).
The tree seemed pretty shadowy, and when I leaned into it, as I was looking up for stars or a moon, there, those leaves just started trembling, and, poof, about 40 fruit bats lifted up, like something out of Hollywood, to make it simple. All over the space above my head. Scattered like frenzied folks.
One of those hundred moments in my life where my young verbiage, kick ass and bitchin’, came back calling.
I’ve written a lot about Vietnam, about the work, the ideas, about wounds of my father and friends and countrymen seemingly huge, but compared to the Vietnamese suffering, our are scratches. Trauma. Homeless veterans. Science and biology. Ecology. Travel. Photography. Deep trawling of people in Vietnam. Friendships. And, a short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam.
I want you to guard against those who demand that you die just to prove something. It is not that I advise you to respect your life more than anything else, but not to die uselessly for the need of others… for you still have many years ahead of you. Many years of joy and happiness to experience. Who else but you can experience your life?
It’s a different world, now, and it was different leading up to the pre-Planned Pandemic, pre-Trump/Biden Lunacy, pre-cancelling everything contrary to dead-end narrative, pre-end of real journalism. Now, I find few who want to know about other people, about lives lived, about philosophies gained through reading, schooling, schools of hard knocks, and people hate nuance, and forget about engaging them in deep discussion about animals, really, species like bats, man, scary in the minds of clueless folk.
Things have changed since the infection of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden . . . . The United $tates of America is the Empire of Lies, Empire of Chaos, Empire of Murder, hands down, and we don’t need Pepe Escobar or John Pilger or others to tell us that. But the seed of this evil runs deep infecting everyday conversation.
I was with a guy who is helping me on house construction, and he has true Trump Derangement Syndrome, and alas, talking about DeSantis in derogatory ways, I told him I have Zero love of Pelosi or Desantis, et al. I let him know that I am hard left socialist, and definitely leaning toward communism. Ukraine, and, no, Biden is not a great guy or president. I told him that both parties are equally corrupt, and alas, this is a country of casino, predatory, shock doctrine, disaster, parasitic capitalism, with a big “C” for corrupt-criminal, abided by and promoted by both Republicans and Democrats. He told me that if I am communist, and love that so much, then I should move to Russia. Wow.
There’s a 69 year old Democrat for you.
And again, in rural, Pacific beach Oregon, few want to know about anything other than their little world of self-imposed trauma, confirmation bias, and the black-white world of triple downing on the dumb-down Kool Aid mix.
Obama Derangement Syndrome and Trump Derangement Syndrome. Whew.
I’m thinking about Rogue State, Blum’s work, and how the U$A deems what or who is human, and now, in this up is down, war is peace, lies are truth world of the Mainstream Presstitutes, the lockstep of journalism almost everywhere never digging, or looking astray, and the deplatforming, gaslighting and criminalization of independent thinking. Sort of determining who shall live, and who shall be exterminated.
The protagonist-narrator of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 novel The Sympathizer has a thing for squid. (Think less calamari, more American Pie.) The bastard son of a Vietnamese maid and a French priest, he discovers at the age of thirteen that he has a peculiar fetish for masturbating into gutted squid, lovingly—albeit unwittingly—prepared by his mother for the night’s meal. Unfortunately for him, squid are in short supply in working-class Saigon in the late nineteen-fifties, and so he is forced to wash the abused squid and return them to the kitchen to cover up his crime. Sitting down to dinner with his mother late one night, he tucks into one of those very same squid, stuffed and served with a side of ginger-lime sauce. “Some will undoubtedly find this episode obscene,” he concedes. “Not I!” he declares. “Massacre is obscene. Torture is obscene. Three million dead is obscene. Masturbation, even with an admittedly nonconsensual squid? Not so much.” He should know. By the time he is narrating the novel, he has lived through the Vietnam War as an undercover communist agent in South Vietnam, has sought asylum in America, and is now living as a refugee-cum-spy in Los Angeles.
The Sympathizer was published in 2015—three years after Kill Anything that Moves—but it could just as easily have been written as a prompt for historian turned investigative journalist Nick Turse. Indeed, Turse’s central aim in Kill Anything that Moves is to expose the unparalleled obscenity of the Vietnam War: unparalleled both in terms of the devastating scale and variety of harm done and the diabolical levels of premeditation on the part of the U.S. military. Historians of the Vietnam War, as much as the American public, have traditionally remembered the massacre at Mỹ Lai—in which upwards of five hundred unarmed Vietnamese civilians were hacked, mowed down, and violated by the American military—as an outlier in an otherwise largely acceptable war (at least in terms of American actions). But as Vietnam veteran and whistleblower Ron Ridenhour explains, and Turse quotes approvingly, Mỹ Lai “was an operation, not an aberration.” (source)
Bats as vermin, pests. Entire bat roosts murdered with one dynamite stick thrown into a cave. Double and triple taps. Splats. Bats emblematic of peoples the U$A deems as vermin, less than. Many of those splats are in the Global South, BIPOC!
Bioindicators. Bats. Truly:
The earth is now subject to climate change and habitat deterioration on unprecedented scales. Monitoring climate change and habitat loss alone is insufficient if we are to understand the effects of these factors on complex biological communities. It is therefore important to identify bioindicator taxa that show measurable responses to climate change and habitat loss and that reflect wider-scale impacts on the biota of interest. We argue that bats have enormous potential as bioindicators: they show taxonomic stability, trends in their populations can be monitored, short- and longterm effects on populations can be measured and they are distributed widely around the globe. Because insectivorous bats occupy high trophic levels, they are sensitive to accumulations of pesticides and other toxins, and changes in their abundance may reflect changes in populations of arthropod prey species. Bats provide several ecosystem services, and hence reflect the status of the plant populations on which they feed and pollinate as well as the productivity of insect communities. Bat populations are affected by a wide range of stressors that affect many other taxa. In particular, changes in bat numbers or activity can be related to climate change (including extremes of drought, heat, cold and precipitation, cyclones and sea level rise), deterioration of water quality, agricultural intensification, loss and fragmentation of forests, fatalities at wind turbines, disease, pesticide use and overhunting. There is an urgent need to implement a global network for monitoring bat populations so their role as bioindicators can be used to its full potential. (source)
And yet, most people are not batty about bats. Most people have their preconceptions, their biases, their outright misinformation about bats, and all those prejudices about bats vis-a-vis Hollydirt, Hollywood, sorry, and literature, and myth.
Truly, we, the common socialists, the ones pushing for community-directed governance, who know k12 needs to be facilitated in the out of doors, with hands on earth, and deep learning with languages, music, poetry, biology/ecology, we are the solutions. All things can be solved with clean food, water, true art, loving hearth and home, and deep thinking. With intergenerational cohesion. I am just a guy who has studied agrarian-centered cultures, who has traveled far and wide, and who was immersed in six languages other than my primary language, English. Immersed in dozens of different cultures and perspectives. But we common socialists, us International Workers of World wobbly types, we are the bats, the indicator species, the splat. Not worthy of life.
Debs, another leading person, who is considered splat, collateral damage. (source)
Expendable, sacrificial lambs. Bats.
Yet bats have defined me, as has all those dives around the world. As well as ground truthing in Guatemala or working as a newspaperman in Bisbee. All those thousands of college students I have worked with over five states. The work in prisons. A thousand published pieces, from newspapers, to magazines, journals, essay collections, and more. My radio show: Tipping Points: Voices from the Edge.
And more, but I want to think like a bat, be a bat just for one night along the Laos border, skimming the sky for mosquitos, moths and flying walking sticks.
Adams stated that rescinding COVID vaccine mandates would provide more “flexibility” to parents and businesses.
“It is time to move on to the next level of fortifying our city,” Adams said. “It’s imperative to send the right message and lead by example as I’m doing today by getting my booster shot.”
While announcing this sun-setting of the nation’s strictest COVID vaccine policy mandated by former mayor Bill de Blasio, Adams implored New Yorkers to get new booster shots aimed at “highly transmissible” COVID variants.
The Defender* (I) asked national grassroots organizer for Children’s Health Defense and founder of TeachersForChoice.org, Michael Kane, several questions regarding the authority for which Adams can roll back some parts of the mandate for the private sector.
“NYC is still in a state of emergencyrenewed every six days by Mayor Adams. That is where the authority comes from and no mechanism currently exists in NYC to stop the renewals.”
When the sweeping mandate was put into force December 27, 2021, Bill de Blasio used a commission order from the city’s health commissionerDave Chokshi. That mandate took many city officials, businesses, union representatives and public workers by surprise.
However, when he first announced the mandate would go into effect four days after he left office, de Blasio expressed confidence that any legal challenge to the mandate would be defeated.
The City’s lead attorney backed him up. “The health commissioner has an obligation and a responsibility to protect the public health. Here, he is issuing an order that is intended to do just that in a public health emergency,” Corporation Counsel Georgia Pestana told Politico last year.
The legal qualification for this emergency law is that the mandate applied across the board rather than singling out any industry.
“Lack of an enforcement mechanism doesn’t mean the mandate was gone,” Kane said. “What major business in NYC would risk bucking the mandate? Once the mandate is officially repealed, some businesses may even choose to keep it.”
For the more than 800 teachers Adams fired this month for not getting the vaccine, losing incomes and medical insurance is more than just a bitter taste in their mouths. These terminations have occurred during a statewide teacher shortage.
When the mayor was asked yesterday why teachers and public sector employees still have to follow a vaccine mandate, his response was confusing.
Kane put it bluntly: “Mayor Adams answered this today and it was the worst answer I have EVER SEEN to any question ever.”
The mandate for city workers has been controversial, leading to workers being fired, lawsuits and political protests. “We’re in a steady phase of pivot and shift,” the mayor said yesterday when asked if he plans to discontinue the mandate on city workers. “We do things. We roll things out slowly. Right now, that is not on the radar for us.”
Adams may have rolled back some of de Blasio’s COVID restrictions, but he’s kept the public worker and school employee vaccine proof mandate.
To date, New York City has fired more than 2,600 municipal workers in total for not getting a COVID shot, according to the New York Post’s findings.
“I don’t think anything dealing with COVID makes sense, and there’s no logical pathway of [what] one can do,” Adams said yesterday at the press conference. “You make the decisions based on how to keep our city safe, how to keep our employees operating.”
For many of the 24,000 members of the NYPD, last year’s mandates set off protests and lawsuits by police. Yesterday’s announcement for some is “irrational pseudoscience.”
“This announcement is more proof that the vaccine mandate for New York City police officers is arbitrary, capricious and fundamentally irrational,” said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch. “Now that the city has abandoned any pretense of a public health justification for vaccine mandates, we expect it to settle our pending lawsuits and reinstate with back pay our members who unjustly lost their jobs.”
It was March 24 when Adams rolled back the vaccine mandate for athletes, but not teachers and municipal workers, including cops and firefighters.
United Federation of Teachers said in a statement that lifting the vaccine mandate for performers and athletes was a double standard.
“The city should not create exceptions to its vaccination requirements without compelling reason,” the UFT statement read. “If the rules are going to be suspended, particularly for people with influence, then the UFT and other city unions are ready to discuss how exceptions could be applied to city workers.”
Rachelle Garcia, a 15-year veteran teacher in New York City, spoke to Fox Friends First yesterday about her and her family’s struggle after she was fired earlier this month. She made three religious exemptions, but all were denied.
The Defender* (I) talked at length with Kane, who had been a New York teacher 15 years before “voluntarily resigning” last year because he refused to be vaccinated.
“It’s a failed public health policy.” Kane said he saw a sea change in attitudes toward fired teachers and first responders at the Labor Day rally earlier this month. “My wife and I marched with New York Workers for Choice through 47th Avenue where all the teachers were, and we were cheered on, caused a real ruckus.”
A year ago, Kane said, the atmosphere was much different when fellow teachers did not support his anti-mandate stance. He cited a recent Emerson college poll that found 52 percent of New Yorkers were in favor of rehiring the fired teachers, compared to 30 percent against.
Kane says good teachers and public servants no longer serve the city because of the mandate. “I had a Dreamers Alliance Club for five years. I took the kids to businesses, to Albany. Now they have nothing.”
Many teachers like Kane have said the mandate got rid of a lot of dedicated, intelligent educators.
But the fight is still on. “We’re going to go back to City Hall this week and demand this policy ends.” Kane is hoping a few hundred fired workers will be there on the steps of City Hall lobbying to get their jobs back.
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Note: This was an assignment by Robert F. Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense “news aggregator,” The Defender. I answered a solicitation to apply for one of two “reporter” jobs there. Got interviewed September 7. Yeah, funny stuff, applying at age 65. The Zoom interview with two editors went well, and then a a week later I was assigned a piece, as a trial-test.
They gave me the actual story to cover, again, a day late and a dollar short, but I got a hold of three sources for original quotations. The idea was to follow up with a story already covered heavily in the media and through environmental groups, and try to add something new.
I was told in the Zoom interview if The Defender published the trial piece, I would be paid (not sure what that rate was). Read it, and many have praised the piece.
Ahh, the cracker story turned out to be bigger and longer than they had assigned. And, the three females looking at the copy, well, they were using this piece as a trial. The main editor said it made sense that I was not spot on with their AP style; i.e., surface level stuff.
But, then, another test, one more test, for the $33 an hour gig. I was feeling a bit, well, used, and not confident this outfit was all up and up. But I plowed on with short notice to do a recap of the above New York City mayoral decision to lift the mandate story.
Yeah, I contacted four places in New York for comments, both by phone and email. Luckily, fired teacher Michael Kane, who just started at CHD, was available.
We talked for almost an hour this morning, and I submitted the story that you just read above. He told me it was fantastic.
Yep, that was it.
However, I received the following email after talking with Michael Kane and getting some confidence-building:
Hi Paul. I enjoyed meeting you and appreciate your time, but the editor and I have decided you’re not the right fit for our next reporter.
I wish you the best. S
Now, a funny thing happened on the way to the Defender. There was a verbal discussion during the interview stage how I’d get paid for the story if they ran it. They did publish it, and it was long one. Alas, though, this is Gig economy, and the collective bargaining ain’t at a thing with nonprofits like Children’s Health Defense, usually writers get something for things published. In the old days, I got “kill fees” from magazines who assigned something and failed to publish it.
No word back from them about getting some recompense. Typical, in my opinion.
Also, so it goes, in my opinion, with this new normal abnormal, of gig workers, of aggregator news (sic) sites, and a world where curt and empty words, like those above, go with the territory. Unprofessional, but I was the one being judged!
Luckily, my journalism experience over five decades has mostly been me going out and doing original work, not looking at sources that already covered a breaking news item in order to paraphrase and recap it in my own words. Sure, a ton of press releases and leads on stories from sources came my way, but the bottom line was/is I was on the spot, doing original investigation and coverage, of my own accord, usually under the auspices of my own story generation, or sometimes I pursued stories hashed out with editors that then got me deep into the weeds, sometimes.
Now, Michael Kane and I talked at length early this AM Pacific time, since he’s in NYC. I thought the piece which I had almost completed would be apropos for The Defender. It never got looked at, essentially, never edited.
Kane’s the lead-creator of Teachers for Choice. He has been teaching for 15 years, and had been in special education. He felt he was meant to teach after a few years of getting his feet wet.
He told me he was super active in the union, American Federation of Teachers, and was even a union delegate and ended up in the state Capital lobbying and presenting and rallying around teachers and education issues.
When the mandate came down for NYC educators, K12, he wanted to opt out. He ended up not signing the waiver that would have allowed him to stay home, get pay, lose his medical benefits, for a year, with the caveat of not suing the school/education district.
His wife and Michael had just purchased a home, and he told me both of them (she’s a teacher, I believe) had lost their jobs.
The fired teachers and public employees have a lawsuit still pending for an October court date with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. He told me that he believes Adams reversal of the private employers mandate (it is sun-setting November 1, but still, it’s optional to opt out of making employees have vaccines for COVID) has set in motion “energy” around the firing of teachers, many of whom have dedicated like Michael a decade or more developing both as educators and community and student inspirations.
He told me he is progressive, and the irony is he is supporting the Republican candidate for New York governor. “I’ve never voted Republican.”
These alliances and allegiances are what also adds to the new abnormal. He also pointed out that de Blasio pushed MMR shots for adults in Brooklyn when a measles cluster broke out.
“Adams is much more transactional than de Blasio was. The Mets owner Cohen gave Adams money for his campaign, and so the Mayor carved out a vax mandate exception for athletes.”
Kane told me that “well over fifty percent of the Black Community didn’t get the COVID vaccination.” Lots of skepticism on medical overlords telling African Americans what to do with their bodies, medically and drug wise.
We talked about how mayors and governors and the CDC and president expect educators to be compliant. He also said what he saw during the first year of the COVID teaching arena was bizarre.
“In September 2021 I was still at my job. I stood back and it looked like the kids and teachers were robots.”
He said they had to wear face masks and some both masks and shields. All teachers had Chrome books, and the kids had laptops. The teachers had mics set up under their masks to amplify their muffled voices. Students had to DM teachers and aides when they had a question or problem.
“It was frightening.”
Yep, we agreed on how the downfall of education occurred across the world when social media came into play. We talked about John Taylor Gatto, and really how education is now not about helping the kids one on one, or really about creating creative and independent thinkers.
Ahh, so-called modern scientific schooling is actually a perverse experiment of morphing children in compliants, or hateful of learn. Here’s what Gatto calls the “seven lessons of school teaching.” These are lessons of mass forced schooling:
It confuses the students. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials, this programming is similar to the television; it fills almost all the “free” time of children. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
It makes them indifferent.
It makes them emotionally dependent.
It makes them intellectually dependent.
It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.
As Michelle Alexander points out, these are children “who have a parent or loved one, a relative, who has either spent time behind bars or who has acquired a criminal record and thus is part of the under-caste – the group of people who can be legally discriminated against for the rest of their lives.” She writes:
. . . For these children, their life chances are greatly diminished. They are more likely to be raised in severe poverty; their parents are unlikely to be able to find work or housing and are often ineligible even for food stamps. For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far greater level of hopelessness as they see so many of their loved ones cycling in and out of prison. Children who have incarcerated parents are far more likely themselves to be incarcerated. (source)
Education as a democratic project is utopian in its goal of expanding and deepening the ideological and material conditions that make a democracy possible. Teachers need to be able to work together, collaborate, work with the community, and engage in research that informs their teaching. In this instance, critical pedagogy refuses the atomizing structure of teaching that informs traditional and market-driven notions of pedagogy. Moreover, critical pedagogy should provide students with the knowledge, modes of literacy, skills, critique, social responsibility, and civic courage needed to enable them to be engaged critical citizens willing to fight for a sustainable and just society.
**Final note! Nah, The Defender has not contacted me after I politely asked about the recompense. This is the new new abnormal: is it a skanky world out there now in U$A? Are people in 2022 that unprofessional, that vapid, and that deaf to human compassion? As of September 22, no word on the pay. Lovely!**
**Second Final Note!** You don’t make money as a writer, or at least 95 percent of most writers do not make money! Aggregators like The Defender use articles from Commondreams, Yale Environment 360, Environmental Working Group, Center for Biological Diversity, and all the other mainstream ones, and I know they don’t pay for the creative commons use, and the authors of those pieces, if listed, do not get pennies from heaven. So, in reality, the piece that was up two days ago on the cracker plant should have landed me at least $150. I used to get $400 for a column I wrote. Prices for word count (or pay) have gone DOWN, and in some cases, the creepy people think that having a digital clipping of a piece of writing is reward enough. So much for solidarity amongst workers! Usury appears everywhere, and sometimes it’s just using people’s time for free. That cracker article I put in eight hours, man! Even flipping burgers at $16 an hour would be an eight-hour day at $128.
Supporters of Shell’s Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex allege it will revive the region’s economy, but critics say it will pollute the environment and harm human health — especially children’s health.
Along the banks of the Ohio River, some residents of Pennsylvania towns like Beaver, Vanport, Brighton and Monaca are hoping a $6 billion ethane cracker plant in Potter Township will deliver positive economic benefits, including new jobs.
But others who live in the region are skeptical the plant can deliver on those promises. And some say they’re concerned about the plant’s potential to pollute the environment and harm human health.
Once it’s operational this fall, Shell’s Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex — the recipient of a $1.6 billion tax break, the largest ever for the state — will become a major player in U.S. petrochemicals, producing 1.6 million tons of polyethylene annually in the form of nurdles, tiny polyethylene pellets used to manufacture plastic goods.
Beaver County Commissioner Jack Manning expressed a “mostly positive” attitude toward Shell’s project, even though people are leaving his county because of it. Manning spoke earlier this year to Yale Environment 360 of his hope that the the petrochemicals industry might restore the region to its former glory days of Big Steel.
Mark Thomas, president of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, a nonprofit economic development group, last year told NBC News, “The steel from the [region’s] steel mills not only helped win World War II but built everything from the Empire State Building to the Golden Gate Bridge … and everything in between.”
Indeed, some state and federal officials predict a “regional renaissance,” not only for the jobs these plants might bring, “but also for the development that could be an economic multiplier, or catalyst,” officials said, citing a potential boom for the restaurant and hotel industries, commercial transportation and manufacturing.
“It’s not that the industry by itself will rescue all the communities that need investment,” Thomas said. “But it will create enough of a fire that it can be catalytic.”
The oil industry claims gas supplies in the Ohio River region — sometimes referred to as the Appalachian petrochemical hub — could support as many as five large cracker plants like Shell’s 800-acre complex, which is set to open soon after five years of construction.
However, Eric de Place, one of the authors (with Molly Kiick) of a December 2021 study by the Ohio River Valley Institute on the economic impact of Shell’s large-scale development, said data collected by the study show large-scale development by Shell has failed to produce growth in Beaver County.
de Place told The Defender:
The supposed revitalization of Beaver County did not happen. Instead, we have people complaining about the noises. There was even a foam release into the river. Complaints about odors. And flaring caused light to be reflected off the clouds. This industry brings with it a ton of environmental problems.
Along with those “environmental problems” — Shell’s plant, situated 25 miles from Pittsburgh, would emit 2.25 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, wiping out the gains in carbon reduction Pittsburgh planned to achieve by 2030 — critics of the project say it also comes with risks to human health.
Indeed, some community members expressed fear that a petrochemical boom will move Beaver County one step closer to becoming another “cancer alley” — the term environmentalists and industry wonks use to describe an 85-mile stretch of land along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which is home to 150 petrochemical plants and refineries.
Manning, who used to work in the petrochemical industry, rejected those concerns, telling WESA-FM NPR he’s confident Shell’s cracker plant is safe.
Shell’s environmental and regulatory lead, Kimberly Kaal, holds a similar view. When asked what effect the company’s cracker plant would have on the health of residents in nearby communities she said, “We don’t have an impact.”
But community-based groups disagreed.
“The harm is considerable,” Dr. Edward C. Ketyer, a retired pediatrician and president of Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania, told The Defender.
“People exposed to the emissions and pollution will get sick, because that’s what happens to people who live near petrochemical facilities like cracker plants!”
When asked about his biggest concerns now that the Shell plant is about to go online, Ketyer said he’s concerned about inversions and ground-level ozone and Shell’s insistence that the plant is non-hazardous.
“I worry about the topography of the area, where air emissions get trapped in the river valley, especially during common temperature inversions — effectively gassing the residents living in proximity and downwind from the plant,” Ketyer said.
In an interview with The Defender, Ketyer, who lives in the region, said:
“This area of the country is a really special place. The people are genuine and take pride in their communities. Even though they’ve been warned, they haven’t processed what they’ve learned.
“When this plant opens — this week or next month — they are in for a big surprise. And they are not going to be happy.”
Ethane cracker plants like the Shell plant in Pennsylvania’s Potter Township perform the first step in the process of transforming ethane — a component of natural gas derived from fracking — into plastic products.
When shale is extracted from the ground, it contains methane as well as other components, including natural gas liquids (NGLs) such as ethane. A separation unit at the drilling site divides methane from NGLs in order to yield ‘pipeline quality’ natural gas, which is mostly pure methane that can be burned as fuel.
Meanwhile, the NGLs have other uses and are separated into ethane, propane, butane, and other components at a fractionation plant. Ethane then can be transferred from the fractionation plant to an ethane cracker, which converts ethane into ethylene, the basic building bloc of many plastics products.
The plants, which use extreme heat to “crack” the molecular bonds in ethane to produce ethylene, “have the potential to emit large amounts of ethylene, propylene and other so-called ‘highly reactive volatile organic compounds.’ These are chemical compounds that can react quickly in sunlight to form ground-level ozone, or smog.”
Once operational, the Shell cracker plant has been permitted to release more than 30 tons of hazardous air pollutants, 323 tons of fine particles, and 522 tons of VOCs. These numbers make it a major contributor to pollution in our region.
But cracking ethane into ethylene is just one phase of an energy-intensive polluting process, according to de Place, who works in the Pacific Northwest for Salish Strategies and several other organizations as an environmental consultant.
“You have to drill the wells to support the petrochemical plant, but you also have to build the petrochemical plant in order to keep drilling the wells,” according to Rebecca Scott, associate professor of environmental sociology at the University of Missouri, in a September 15 Sierra magazine article. “It’s like a Ponzi scheme for natural gas.”
In a 15-year period, from 2002 to 2017, 10,000 fracking wells were drilled in Pennsylvania. Almost a third are located within 1.25 miles of a residential groundwater well.
The cracker plant produces waste products and fluids, some of which are radioactive, which then have to be stored. And the plastics then have to be shipped all over the world.
Children bear brunt of health risks
Moms Clean Air Force and dozens of other local and state watchdog groups, in many cases with the backing of university-based scientists, agree that cracker plants spew large amounts of dangerous pollution into the air, including benzene, formaldehyde and toluene; volatile organic compounds (VOCs); particulate matter; nitrogen oxide; and carbon dioxide.
That means people living near cracker and fracking operations are at higher risk of cancer, neurological problems, cardiovascular disease, respiratory ailments, birth defects, asthma attacks and low birth rates, according to a 2016 report from JAMA Internal Medicine.
Moms Clean Air Force Project Manager Patrice Tomcik voiced her concerns about air pollution in her hometown of Gibsonia, near Pittsburgh, during one of the community meetings organized by Shell.
Tomcik said:
I know firsthand about polluting industries because my community is completely surrounded by polluting sources. Upwind to the west of our home is an interstate connector and to the north is a steel plant. To my south and east is a cluster of coal-fired power plants that contribute to making Pennsylvania’s power sector the fifth dirtiest in the nation.
To compound the air pollution problem are multiple unconventional natural gas wells in my children’s school district with the closest ones a half mile away. My youngest son had cancer, and I know his immune system is compromised.
Tomcik cited a Yale study that found children in Pennsylvania who live near unconventional gas production (fracking) are up to 3 times more likely to be diagnosed with leukemia between the ages of 2 and 7 than those who did not live near wells.
The Yale study found children who live within a mile-and-a-quarter of a well face the highest risk of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Even carried out to 6 miles from a well, the study suggests children still had an elevated level of risk of getting leukemia.
“What our results really indicate is that exposure to unconventional oil and gas development may be an important risk factor for ALL, particularly for those children that are exposed in utero,” said Cassandra Clark, lead author of the study and an environmental epidemiologist at the Yale Cancer Center.
Children living within one-and-a-quarter miles of a fracking well “were twice as likely to develop ALL than others, and babies born to pregnant women who lived near these sites were nearly 3 times as likely to develop this type of cancer,” according to a study published August 18, in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
“Hundreds of chemicals have been reportedly used in injection water or detected in wastewater,” according to the August study.
Keyter told The Defender that the names of the chemicals emitted into the air from one of the largest petrochemical ethane cracker plants in the world aren’t a secret, and that the Shell ethane cracker plant is no different than any of the other cracker plants in operation around the country and around the world.
“It’s no secret that people who live around these types of fossil-fueled industrial facilities are more likely to get sick than people who don’t, Keyter told The Defender.
He added:
Children are more likely to be exposed because, well, they’re kids, and they and their mothers are more likely to suffer the health consequences as a result. These things are objectively known.
Children are inherently more susceptible to health damage from environmental exposures due to the fact that their bodies and organ systems are rapidly growing and developing.
Like many scientists and doctors, Keyter spoke of the longer “shelf life” children have:
They have more years to develop manifestations of disease after exposure(s) to toxics in the environment. We know that fossil fuel pollution — fine particulate matter, volatile organic compounds like benzene and formaldehyde, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — is arguably the worst kind of pollution humanity has seen in terms of inflicting the greatest harm to the greatest numbers.
Citizen groups still active, despite failure to stop Shell plant
Matthew Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, part of a collaboration of environmental community groups in the Ohio River valley, considers the collective fight against this Shell project as a loss.
But he believes the future of plastics is shaky.
“When you talk to people on the street about Shell, you are talking to people who have endured the zinc plant, major coal-fired power plants, existing chemical plants, nuclear power plants, all at their doorstep for generations,” Mehalik told the Pittsburg Independent a week ago. “There is a normalization of a deep acceptance of health consequences for employment. . . . It’s as if they forgot their history.”
Mehalik, who grew up in the Industrial River Valley, told The Defender how his six-and-a-half years working to oppose Shell’s project has resulted in lost battles, how Shell gaslights residents and how it manipulates projected profits for its plastics markets.
That “wobbly market,” Mehalik emphasized, glosses over the huge tax incentive ($1.6 billion), pushing sort of a “cognitive dissonance boosterism” that disregards the quality of life and health impacts of the plant.
The battle may have been lost with the Shell cracker, but Mehalik stressed the four “proposed” plastics plants for this area are not seeing the tax support or capital investment Shell’s cracker facility realized.
Shell’s announced startup date is the end of summer. Mehalik noted there has been increased use of ground flares at the plant’s stacks. More and more plumes and flares are consistent with a cracker plant about to begin operation.
In addition to groups like Breathe Project and Moms Clean Air Force, other organizations also remain intent on holding Shell’s feet to the fire in terms of emissions and other health hazards. Among them are the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community and the citizen watchdog group, Eyes on Shell, launched last month.
They all serve as the eyes, ears and noses on the ground, urging residents to keep health journals and report flaring incidents, foul odors and other troubling signs.
“There are still battles to be won,” Mehalik said. “Pursuing truth is worth all the energy. I’m hopeful.”
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Update: The cracker plant has been spewing black smoke the past 18 hours (September 19-20). “Process compressor shutdown causes smoke to pour from Shell cracker plant” (CBS News)
Amazing, really, all the money, all the human lifetimes wasted on the Morty ZioLensky’s most corrupt regime, all the oligarchs making money there, and, of course, the endless gravy train for the most despicable of souls, those offensive murdering weapons manufacturers and the tens of thousands of other companies with big and little inside tracks to the culling and killing machine that is the USA.
Authorities have traced the cause of a sewage spill that closed RAT Beach in Torrance Wednesday to a residential street in the Palos Verdes Estates, health officials announced. (source)
Of course, it gets bigger, here in LaLa Land, where Morty ZioLensky rings the bell for the New York Criminal Stock Mafia Exchange. Much bigger, and alas, this is coming to a township or city near you. Forget about decades of environmental warriors talking about non-point pollution in our thousands of rivers and waterways.
About 17 million gallons of sewage were dumped into Santa Monica Bay following the failure at the Playa del Rey plant. The resulting odors were later blamed by residents who said they developed rashes, nausea, burning eyes and other symptoms in the aftermath.
The L.A. city attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment. (source)
Wonderful beachfront view (above) of the shit about to hit the fan. The hydrogen sulfide is just one issue from the fumes. Raw sewage is the thing of great potentials — heavy metals and SSRIs in the ecosystem, washed up viruses, e coli, and thousands of ever-expanding brain and flesh eating microbes.
Yet, the news is about Ukraine and EuroTrashLandia and the U$A and Klanada — how it is all Ukraine, cold winters, energy bills 8 times last year’s, food shortages, and, well, no more protests, or else. Full-fledged support of war, proxies, economic bombardment, and fake inflation. Here, Richard Wolff does the 101 Econ explanation of what inflation really is: the owners of the businesses and factories deciding it’s time to raise prices to, well, off-set the half-greed to proportionately throw down the full-throttle greed that is capitalism.
It’s only an hour long, and it is definitely basics of capitalism, and, yes, it is NOT the Putin Inflation . . . never was, never will be:
More cognitive dissonance in Chile, where they can’t pass an amazing constitution, but they can start squirting more untested crap into pregnant women, et al:
On Friday, Chile’s Ministry of Health (Minsal) announced that the country would start the vaccination of priority groups amid limitations of monkeypox vaccines in the international context.
RELATED: US: Concerns Are Mounting Due to Escalating Monkeypox Outbreak
Through his official Twitter account, Undersecretary for Public Health Cristóbal Cuadrado said, “We expect to begin the first stage of the inoculation process during October.”
The vaccine to be used for the immunization process in the country will be the Jynneos vaccine from the Bavarian Nordic laboratory. It was obtained through the Pan American Health Organization’s Revolving Fund.
The first stage will include those “close contacts of confirmed cases of monkeypox who are at risk of severe disease, i.e., immunosuppressed people, HIV patients, and pregnant women,” Cuadrado said. (source)
Here, not my favorite source, but two Chileans discussing it, the lost chance for this amazing constitution to get passed by the people:
Ariel Dorfman: This was an extraordinary Magna Carta, both because of its origins, in a popular protest, because it was drafted by people who looked like Chile itself, not sort of elite experts who behind closed walls were constantly deciding what others would be ruled by. And it was, as you mentioned, you know, incredibly ecological, the most advanced in the world. It extended democracy in participatory forms in all levels. It legalized — not only legalized abortion but — you know, when I read the constitution, and I’ve read it several times, the one that has just been rejected, what calls attention to myself is the extraordinary tenderness with which it’s been composed and written. It speaks about the glaciers. It speaks about the air. It speaks about the children, over and over again the children. It speaks about the caretakers at home. It speaks about the animals. It speaks about the dogs. It speaks about everything vulnerable that needs to be taken care of. And, of course, it includes there, for the first time, those who have been invisible and exspoliated constantly by the major powers in Chile: the Indigenous populations. It is also an extraordinarily feminist constitution. And I just could go on and on and on. It had 388 articles, perhaps too many.
Well, well, so the beat goes on, in the endless prattling of media, 24/7, beamed up directly into our brains. Here, another story, tied to my local view, at the OSU Hatfield Marine Sciences Center: “HMSC Science on Tap: Ocean Iron Fertilization: Knowns and unknowns.”
Several decades ago, oceanographers first recognized that the addition of iron to surface waters stimulates algal growth in over a third of the ocean. This realization sparked international efforts to understand the role that iron plays in regulating ocean ecosystems and global carbon cycling. How do feedbacks between climate, iron-rich dust deposition, and ocean productivity work? Can humans leverage iron fertilization to offset greenhouse gas emissions or boost fisheries? (source)
In the “old days,” well, there was a precautionary principle at the top of the agenda; there was a big skiepticism in the sciences and in anything around geo-engineering and climate and oceans. There were even activists against Genetically Engineered mosquitoes in the tens of millions being released into our ecosystems. There used to be folks concerned about nanoparticles in our foods, and there used to be concern about neurotoxins in pesticides and hormone distrupters in baby’s milk bottle.
David Emerson, a geomicrobiologist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine, told Mongabay in an email that when it comes to iron fertilization there are still “critical questions worthy of research,” such as whether alternative forms of iron would interact differently with phytoplankton and ocean currents. However, he also emphasized the “unknown cost” of ecosystem impacts from large-scale fertilization.
“We shouldn’t do it, unless there are concomitant major reductions in emissions,” he said. “We shouldn’t do it until we know significantly more about how effective it will be. We should only do it if the alternative is major ecosystem/human civilization collapse.” (source)
[Satellite image shows a phytoplankton bloom off Newfoundland, Canada, on September 19, 2019. The bloom occurred unusually late for the region, possibly because of higher temperatures and more sunlight than is typical for that time of year. Image courtesy of NASA.]
But there are still warriors going up against Monsanto, Bill Gates, the 10 controlling corporations of food systems, seeds and GMOs.
As effective action on the climate crisis could threaten corporate profits, Big Food and agribusiness conglomerates are counting on greenwashing to save them: the marketing strategy where they use misleading information to make it appear as if they and the products they sell are providing solutions to climate change. This confusing and unrealistic set of greenwashing tactics has even made its way inside international fora, especially at UN climate summits.
Building on the claims made by organisations and social movements around the world, GRAIN has prepared a short glossary to demystify these corporate proposals and expose them as false solutions. In a concise way, we aim to reveal who is behind these greenwashing concepts and why they actually deepen the climate crisis and social inequality.
This glossary focuses on corporations’ 10 favourite terms, ranging from “climate smart agriculture”, to “nature-based solutions” and “bioeconomy”. We have accompanied some of those concepts by infographics to help illustrate with irony the main problems generated by this corporate greenwashing. (source)
Here are the offending terms, the propaganda, the amazing work of millions of human lifetimes to lie, deceive, steal, and cobble the world.
Infinitesimal, grand, pervasive, from cradle to grave, the bombardment of propaganda and forced and concerted unlearning-unknowing (agnotology), each nanosecond, the world wide web and the dirty perversions of MSM and Holly-Dirt, and those millions and millions of Eichammans working for governments, the average kid or adult, well, he or she just isn’t getting the big or small of it. Logic and ethics are thrown out the window. Precautionary thinking, actions, commitments, well, those things are outside the common person’s way of going about his or her daily living.
Again, up is down, fat is thin, small is big, lies are truth, money is for nothing. Imagine, Switzerland, now a land of young women with masks and pro-pro war signs . . . That is the new propaganda frame — getting young people so messed up on their own roots, screwing with their own cultural DNA, their own history, that they would fall for this insanity:
Ahh, diplomacy is dead, and while Switzerland is a weapons producer, and a haven for criminal activity (hidden treasuries of dictators, drug kingpins, government leaders of the “free-for-all” world, for banks, for, well, you know what Switzerland is), here, the take on how to bring Switzerland back to the table as a neutral actor in maybe helping end the proxy war in Ukraine:
It is imperative that president Cassis take note and change his direction. Here is my prescription for Swiss change:
1. Abandon the NATO-leaning partisanship immediately.
2. Withdraw support of war inspired sanctions. Cassis has chosen to support the EU issued sanctions, but not those of Russia. Neutrality demands honoring the sanctions of neither side.
3. Recoil from any Swiss role that might involve facilitating the provision of weapons for use in the war.
4. Recognize that the ultimate decision makers in the conflict are Russia and the United States. It is readily apparent that NATO, the EU, and Ukraine are largely marching to the beat of an American drummer. Switzerland should seek to open negotiations with the principals, Russia and the United States, preferably hosted on Swiss territory.
5. Host the renegotiation of the basic precepts of the Minsk Accords, but this time with Russia and the United States as principals. That would mean achieving a cease fire and finding a mutually acceptable way of somehow incorporating the Donbass republics into Ukraine.
6. Work toward addressing Russia’s publically proclaimed security concerns vis-à-vis Ukraine, including the exclusion from Ukrainian leadership individuals who identify themselves, either by words or actions, with neo-Nazi ideology.
7. Seek agreement from Russia for the conduct of a Swiss-monitored referendum to affirm the current status of Crimea. (source)
And, then, the queen is dead (not really):
Anyone in the UK who imagined they lived in a representative democracy – one in which leaders are elected and accountable to the people – will be in for a rude awakening over the next days and weeks.
TV schedules have been swept aside. Presenters must wear black and talk in hushed tones. Front pages are uniformly somber. Britain’s media speak with a single, respectful voice about the Queen and her unimpeachable legacy.
Westminster, meanwhile, has been stripped of left and right. The Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour parties have set aside politics to grieve as one. Even the Scottish nationalists – supposedly trying to rid themselves of the yoke of centuries of English rule presided over by the monarch – appear to be in effusive mourning.
The world’s urgent problems – from the war in Europe to a looming climate catastrophe – are no longer of interest or relevance. They can wait till Britons emerge from a more pressing national trauma. (Jonathan Cook)
And alas, the Democratic Party is sooo different than the Republican Party (har-har). Imagine this, a hit squad list coming out of Brussels run by Ukraine (probably not Ukraine per se, more like CIA and Mossad and MI6, etal):
The co-founder of “Pink Floyd” is known for his support of imprisoned Wikileaks’ creator Julian Assange, and for his opposition to imperialism and war, as well as for his awesome music, loved by millions around the world.
Waters recently referred to Joe Biden as a “war criminal” on CNN, and said that Biden is “fueling the fire in Ukraine.”
“This war,” the musician stated, “is basically about the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border, which they promised they wouldn’t do when [Mikhail] Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the USSR from the whole of Eastern Europe.”
Waters also said that Crimea belongs to Russia, because the majority of people living on the peninsula are Russian.
The rock star’s views have outraged the pro-NATO crowd and their Nazi friends, as well as the social justice warriors who froth at the mouth in support of whatever the mainstream media declares to be “the current thing.” Waters, who has always been something of a dissident and anti-war, the way all rock stars used to be when rock and roll was still real, is attacked mercilessly by the “woke” crowd, who are intolerant of all who are not in lockstep with their views. (source)
All is fine on the Western Front, and that shit has already hit the proverbial fan. ‘When the shit hits the fan’ alludes to the messy and hectic consequences brought about by a previously secret situation becoming public.
The true origins of the expression “shit hits the fan” are largely undetermined, though some sources suggest that Canada is to blame—it might have come from particularly picturesque Canadian military language of the early twentieth century. Another suggestion is that the idiom is descended from “an old joke”:
A man in a crowded bar needed to defecate but couldn’t find a bathroom, so he went upstairs and used a hole in the floor. Returning, he found everyone had gone except the bartender, who was cowering behind the bar. When the man asked what had happened, the bartender replied, “Where were you when the shit hit the fan?” (source)
Great piece by Eva Bartlet, on the hit list Ukraine supports, and who funds this Mafiosa thing?
“Western Media Continues to Ignore Ukraine’s Public ‘Kill List’ Aimed at Those Who Question the Kiev Regime”!
Bartlet: “Christelle Néant, a French war correspondent reporting from Donbass for the past six and a half years, mentioned to me before the panel began that some of the information on the site is not disclosed to the general public, and is password-locked.”
Néant, who said she’s been receiving death threats for years, spoke of how it impacts her:“Every time I use my car, I check underneath it for any unpleasant surprise,” referring to a potential car bomb. “
I don’t publish any photos with people I live with or love. I have to be vigilant at all times.”
“I’m not a terrorist, not a criminal, I’m just a correspondent. This list must be closed and all of those involved must be held accountable.”
And so it goes, as the people in Jackson, Mississippi still can’t drink the water. The optics here of this white governor, man, the reason for this environmental racism, just can’t be the only bitter taste in my “shit hit the fan” infused mouth:
Ahh, money in shitty water. Privatize, man. Every single time there is a disaster of the making of anti-government, anti-social safety net monsters, they come up with Privatize:
Jackson’s persistent water problems make daily life hard for residents and business owners alike. That includes boil water notices that can last weeks or more. Before the most recent failure, John Tierre, who owns Johnny T’s Bistro & Blues in downtown Jackson, said his business was already losing thousands of dollars due to spending weeks under a boil water notice.
“First, you’re gonna have to start a couple hours early. That’s already labor in itself, whatever you’re paying per hour,” he told the Mississippi Free Press in late August. “You gotta get in and start boiling water for everything that you’re gonna be using in service. Not only do we have to boil water just to wash dishes, for the bar, for glasses, but there’s the $200 or $300 a day in ice purchases, canned sodas, bottled water, things of that nature.”
State officials are discussing a number of possible solutions for a permanent fix, including privatising Jackson’s water system. “Privatisation is on the table,” Governor Reeves said earlier this week. The city’s Democratic mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, has also discussed hiring private contractors to operate and maintain the water system. (source)
Yeah, baby, billions more for Ukraine to run their corrupt system, from USA taxpayers.
Zelensky?
In a significant assault on worker rights in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky last week signed into law legislation that deprives around 73 percent of workers of their right to union protection and collective bargaining.
“For more than 15 months, the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine, in solidarity with other trade unions, with support of the international community, actively opposed promotion of the anti-labor draft law,” the Federation (FPU) said in a statement.
The Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KVPU) stated, “KVPU will not tolerate a blatant violation of the rights of workers, their constitutional guarantees and international norms and standards. We will continue the fight for workers’ rights.” (source)
There will be photo shoots, and there will be cannon fodder, and there will be blood, and there will be Zelensky rents to be paid:
That’s $51,000 a month Morty ZioLensky gets for this villa he owns in Italy:
Here we go, quoted just below, from the WSWS, world socialist web site, and these references already got me labeled a commie under a Bush or Trump, and alas, today? All Democrats hate social safety programs, err, nets, err, socialism programs. Commie, go home to Russia, China, Venzuela: (Source)
Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat notes that even under the existing labor code, the conditions of workers in Ukraine were atrocious.
“Before the Russian invasion, millions of Ukrainian workers migrated to EU countries (and not only), knowing well that even the poorest of them—Bulgaria and Romania—offered significantly better earnings to an average worker than their homeland.
“Low wages are virtually strangling our economy,” she continued. “In addition, some 20-30 percent of Ukrainian workers are employed ‘unofficially.’
“Even working in a state-owned enterprise, in a critical economy sector, does not guarantee a stable salary, allowing for a decent living.”
Miners, for example, faced delays in payment of wages. “The miners were regularly organizing spontaneous protest actions, including the most desperate move—an underground protest. Another huge underground protest action took place in 2020 in Kryvy Rih, the center of iron mining of transnational importance. A group of workers of KZRK, a formerly state-owned plant consisting of four iron mines and more associated factories, spent more than a month inside mines, demanding a pay rise.”
She cited an expert on labor law who warned that big companies may “artificially split into smaller 250-people entities so that maximum flexibility can be used even by the biggest and strongest employers.”
The fact that the war in Ukraine is being used to impose a brutal increase in exploitation on the already impoverished working class in the country is a further indication of the reactionary character of the conflict. Workers in Ukraine, as well as their brother workers in Russia and the NATO countries, have nothing to gain from this war, which contains the seeds of a world conflagration. Workers in all lands must unite in opposition to the war in Ukraine, which was instigated by US imperialism and its allies as part their drive for world hegemony. (source)
Selfies for Morty (ZioLensky): (source: “Ukraine Counterattacks!”)
I’ve written about this so much and have gotten students to research some of the direct and indirect topics tied to: Who are your masters, and how far will you go to get and keep a job? One solution for one issue — say, looking at crops and regulating soil wetness with a drone is good, but what are the negative consequences of drone tech and drone community college programs? CIA, NSA, FBI, ATF, Cops, and other deals? Is there always a trade off, you know, Fat Man and Little Boy, the consequences of pursuing “science” with the $$ coming from, well, nefarious sources. Lords of War paying for everything.
And then, this goes way beyond greenwashing, etc. I have had students wanting to get a BS in engineering, say, to do work on drones, which back then (ohe, 20 years ago) was one way to help mitigate climate heating’s negative effects on people, communities, land, crops, ecosystems. You know, all that great work to get satellites into space because satellites will help scientists save the world.
But now? Drones? They are everywhere on the battle field, in the cops’ toolbox, everywhere, and not for the good of humankind, unless that good includes bombing wedding parties, and dropping viruses and other poisons on people.
We looked at many seemingly benign companies, like GE, and back then there was this green component of GE, you know what I am talking about: wind turbines, efficiency, solar panels. So, keeping those engineers working on turbines while creating some existential firewall between the war machines GE makes, that was also a topic we looked into.
So, it was possible you could come out of college with a BS, and end up in GE’s green energy arena, without ever touching base with the military arm of the company. That is the silo of old.
General Electric’s (NYSE: GE) aviation subsidiary secured a nearly $284 million contract with the Defense Logistics Agency to provide helicopter engine supplies to the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. (2021). General Electric Aviation, Lynn, Massachusetts, has been awarded a maximum $149,693,969 firm-fixed-price, requirements-type delivery order against a five-year subsumable basic ordering agreement (SPE4AX-22-D-9409) for T700 engine supplies. This was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), as stated in Federal Acquisition Regulations 6.302-1. This is a five-year contract with no option periods. Location of performance is Massachusetts, with a Sept. 30, 2026, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal year 2022 through 2026 Army working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Aviation, Richmond, Virginia.
The U.S. Air Force has awarded GE a $1.58 billion firm-fixed-price contract to supply F110 engines for the Boeing F-15EX Eagle II. This selection makes GE the sole propulsion provider for the U.S. Air Force’s entire planned F-15EX fleet. GE is currently delivering Lot 1 engines for the F-15EX, including two test aircraft currently undergoing flight testing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
Again, jobs, jobs and more jobs, but at what price, and how far will young people go in trying NOT to perpetuate the war machine, the killing machines, and then, of course, how easy is it to go to school, debate philosophies and cultures and politics, and then attempt to apply some humane ethics to one’s course in life, but then to get a job that is not in any way, shape or form part of the matrix, part of the ugly corporate world of exploitation, penury, and profits at any cost, ethics be damned?
One main point of education, in my humble opinion, is to dig under the surface of everything, and in the English writing classes I taught — once mandatory for an undergraduate degree — included working on argumentative papers, and research papers with all the elements of rhetoric covered: classification, cause and effect, process, solutions, and more. To question the profession you might be entering into: the work ethics, the companies’ profiles, what the challenges are, what sort of negative and possible illegal things the companies might be involved in. You know, what is the problem in the nursing profession, or education field, or architecture profession, or marketing company? The idea is to find the dirt and find the issues tied to a profession a student might think she or he is going to pursue.
Education now is floundering like it never has floundered, and with the higher ups there as MBAs, institutional managers, those who go take executive courses/seminars to learn how to NOT be educators, and how to learn how to cut personnel costs, and how to be more efficient and what to inject into more and more watered down curriculum to satisfy the CEOs bottom line business needs, they are part of the downfall. Just what do those drone companies want from a student graduating? The masters at the top of higher education will submit to the corporations.
What involvement did GE have in nuclear weapons production?
Kelle Louaillier (KL): In 1984 in the United States, thousands of companies were involved in some way in producing parts for nuclear weapons systems. GE produced more parts to more major nuclear weapons systems than any other corporation. GE was involved in the promotion of nuclear weapons to the government and in production since day one, with its role in the Manhattan Project.
Specifically, GE was responsible for the critical components, including, for example, the neutron “trigger” for every US nuclear bomb. Notably, before becoming president, Ronald Regan was a spokesman for GE. (Source)
These are the companies profiting most from war.
1. Lockheed Martin
Arms sales 2010: $35.73 billion
Total sales 2010: $45.80 billion
Arms sales as pct. of total sales: 78 percent
Total profit: $2.93 billion
Total employment: 132,000
Sector: Aircraft, Electronics, Missiles, Space
2. BAE Systems
Arms sales 2010: $32.88 billion
Total sales 2010: $34.61 billion
Arms sales as pct. of total sales: 95 percent
Total profit: $1.67 billion
Total employment: 98,200
Sector: Aircraft, Artillery, Electronics, Missiles, Military vehicles, Small arms/ammunition, Ships
3. Boeing
Arms sales 2010: $31.36 billion
Total sales 2010: $64.31 billion
Arms sales as pct. of total sales: 49 percent
Total profit: $3.31 billion
Total employment: 160,500
Sector: Aircraft, Electronics, Missiles, Space
4. Northrop Grumman
Arms sales 2010: $28.15 billion
Total sales 2010: $34.76 billion
Arms sales as pct. of total sales: 81 percent
Total profit: $2.05 billion
Total employment: 117,100
Sector: Aircraft, Electronics, Missiles, Ships, Space
5. General Dynamics
Arms sales 2010: $23.94 billion
Total sales 2010: $32.47 billion
Arms sales as pct. of total sales: 74 percent
Total profit: $2.62 billion
Total employment: 90,000
Sector: Artillery, Electronics, Military vehicles, Small arms/ammunition, Ships
6. Raytheon (NYSE: RTN)
> Arms sales 2010: $22.98 billion
> Total sales 2010: $25.18 billion
> Arms sales as pct. of total sales: 91%
> Total profit: $1.88 billion
> Total employment: 72,400
> Sector: Electronics, Missiles
Those are 2010 stats, and even then the numbers were hiding other routes from US taxpayers to make the Lords of War, well, Gods. Try looking at the stats for 2022; additionally, there are fewer and fewer young people even attempting to play the thought experiment of what if we could stop the war machines, stop paying our taxes for their criminality, and then, to do this: connect every bolt and wire and coat of paint to anything made to produce death, either directly as munitions, or their delivery systems, or even the logistics and intel around war war war.
This is verboten in schools, colleges, truly in many venues, as it is verboten to question the mRNA’s, forced innoculations, forced social distancing, forced mRNA proofs to enter college. Questioning the military murdering machines pushing for more weapons for a Nazi Ukraine? You’ll be tarred and feathered. There are no more discussions about the true price we pay for USA policy targeting Russia and China. No true discussions about what theft is, grand theft, stealing gold reserves from places like Russia, Iran, Venezuela.
This has all been normalized, especially the past 15 years. Support this country, but still fight for the culture wars, the right to be all or nothing you can be. You have to be pronoun neutral, pro-Anything LGBTQA+ conjures up, and the Amnesia has to be deep.
This is the image (below, and it is a sad sack of crap) that also creeps into students’ brains going to college. This is sick, and alas, multimillionaires like Ellen who complained about being discriminated against early in her career, well, she is rubbing elbows with a war criminal:
Or take it to a non-LGBTQA+ multimillionaire’s absurdity, and go for the Black Absurdity, that Black Misleadereship class.
Thus, all of the cultural wars invented by the Liberal and Neoliberal media, and their sleeper cells — higher education liberal arts fools — get us here, really. But I have shown the power of another war criminal to infect all administrations:
So, forget about it, as they say in Mafia land. You can’t criticize a media darling, a war criminal like Kissinger. Never, and to attempt to bring him up now, in 2022, when you can’t get students to think or rethink or think for the first time the crimes of Ukraine under Zelensky and then way back, too. They don’t know who Kissinger is, in the regular schools, and then in those Ivy League ones, Kissinger is a real dream, a hero.
You will be kicked out of your part-time job, big time. Most college teachers are part-time, at the beckon call of perverse chairs and administrators.
And why not? College is for corporations telling worthless VPs and Presidents and the phalanx of administrators and deans working the college scam what needs to be taught.
Of course, this quote (below) is from 2009, and the numbers are, well, way low ball. Think of the deaths caused by depleted uranium, all the pollution, the PTSD, the cultural chaos, all of it. The murdering by Bush, even while he hangs out with liberals like Ellen and Obama, well, it keeps on delivering, that death and carnage. How to put a price on a country destroyed by USA bombs bursting in air and economic bombs and CIA bombs never not going off?
Why is a “gay Hollywood liberal sitting next to” the worst war criminal of the 21st Century? [Noam Chomsky has said the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq was the worst war crime of the 21st Century] President Bush lied about Saddam Hussein having threatening weapons of mass destruction to justify invading defenseless Iraq. “Be kind to everyone?” President Bush’s unnecessary war against Iraq resulted in a reported “1 million dead” Iraqis, “4.5 million displaced, 1 million to 2 million widows, 5 million orphans. (“Bush’s War Totals,” By John Tirman, The Nation, January 28, 2009)
So here we are, now, the crux of the blog — “Background Checks, Algorithms, and the Re-making of the Abnormal” over at Dissident Voice by Mike Templeton. It’s good, of course, and looks at pre-crime, looks at how AI determines who will be in and who will be out. Mixed up with data and then personality tests and profiles, the Kings of AI have us all by the short-hairs. Templeton looks at credit scores, criminal records, evictions, those things. He doesn’t go far enough in terms of other factors the AI Kings can deploy to get us kicked out of civilization. In fact, as you read this, a prospective employer is too, and then, wham, I am pigeon holed for non-compliance, for nasty revolutionary zeal, which makes me a bad worker. Here, a quote, a long one, from his essay, contextualizing Templeton’s words/essay:
A great deal of attention has been paid to the problems of carceral injustice and the increasing use of AI for things such as predictive policing. Much of this research has revealed that these digital technologies serve to recreate economic disparities, racism, and other forms of social discrimination while removing the stain of human agency toward a flawed ideal of objectivity. Less attention has been paid to the use of these digital technologies in pre-employment background checks. This essay examines the use of AI and algorithmic data analysis and the ways these technologies and procedures create a caste of humans who are barred from employment and rendered economically invalid. In the final analysis, AI and algorithmic data analysis in the service of pre-employment background checks reproduces Foucault’s human monster in a contemporary form, a human monster that bears the stigmata of digital unpredictability.
More than 90 percent of all new hires are subjected to some type of background check prior to employment. These background checks search criminal history and records, including non-convictions, debt history, credit ratings, and other data that can offer a picture of the financial health of a potential new hire.1 The idea behind background checks is to ensure the safety of employees and, in the case of schools and hospitals, students and patients. While many states have laws that limit both the reach and use of background checks, the practice of investigating a potential employee’s background is now standard and widespread. In a short piece in the journal Academe, Ann D. Springer explains that universities might be looking for information that would indicate a potential hire’s “character, general reputation, personal characteristics or mode of living.”2 A university may deem it important to determine exactly what kind of person they are considering, and this may include that person’s “character.”3 While the point of Springer’s article is to reveal the potential dangers of background checks, she also pins down one of the main issues in performing such checks: “What if an employee commits a crime or breaks the law? An employer who knew of such past bad acts may be held responsible for failing to act on that knowledge, even if future actions were and are difficult to predict.” Liability can consist of many things like the risk of theft in the case of people with a criminal history of crimes against property or people who are so financially unstable they pose a theft risk. Liability could also be physical danger from people who have a history of violent offenses. In terms of how to predict potential danger and liability, this has been elusive, and companies have generally decided to err on the side of caution and refuse to hire anyone whose background check reveals something that could be seen as dangerous. But prediction is the key to understanding how background checks function in contemporary culture.
It is the digital realm that finds the invalid intolerable because the invalid present the type of unpredictability that is intolerable to digital systems. While companies, organizations, and universities advertise the justification that the background check is in the interest of safety, it is in fact the intolerable danger of the unpredictable that must be ferreted out by the background check. The primary reason for adding algorithmic technology to background checks can only be toward the elimination of unpredictability, otherwise a simple rap sheet would suffice. The reason a simple rap sheet is insufficient is that a human being must look a list of past offences and make a judgment call as to the likelihood of future danger, and this would only compound the levels of unpredictability with the addition of a secondary human consciousness. Above all else, the system must control, neutralize, and lockout any threats to absolute predictability. Thus, we have a caste of people who are determined to be invalid by a system that is no longer bound by human consciousness. Since no human makes this determination, the status of invalidity is the fault of the invalid who have only themselves to blame for their behavior, be it bad credit or a felony conviction. In the final analysis, we are left with a caste of untouchables who will forever remain both economically externalized, in that they are forbidden entry into economic viability, yet completely captured and internalized since they are digitally quantified and categorized. Their status as invalid is dependent on a detailed record of their failures and transgressions. It is the invalid who have taken over as the abnormal, the moral degenerates, and the human monsters.
Yep, those felonies hobbling millions, and I was one of those social workers, helping just released prisoners to get back on their feet: housing, email, safety nets, probation officers, jobs. Yep, felony friendly, or second chance employers are few and far between. My take is that felonies and misdemeanors should all be expunged once a person does his or her time.
Again, nuance is what I teach, and to be realistic, there are literally tens of millions of Americans who have interfaced with the Law somehow and those intersections have a computer and written record — speeding tickets, civil cases, and even as witnesses and even those family members of accused or convicted of a crime. All of those records the Man, The Man, the Boss, is privy to. And, think about another nuance — My Word Press blog, and this Dissident Voice — “a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and justice.” Anything published here, including this, will be part of my profile, my who, what, why, when, where and how of my personality, my pre-employment profile. Look up “Paul Haeder and Anti-Higher Education” on Google CIA. The first page hit on Google, well, enough to get anyone who might be considering me for a job as an educator to think twice about me, and that’s Google, not the Checkr and other sources that can track down my name and then any term tied to it to see what I have written about, say, against the fields of education, social work, journalism, teaching, environmental movement, the US systems of, well, suppression and oppression. (About 154,000 results –0.44 seconds — Paul Haeder and Anti-Education).
Now, if you put my name into Orbitt.net, then “all” the dirty laundry is exposed, or at least, some percentage of the laundry or articles out there since there are 24 pages of my work, only dating back to 2017. If you look me up over at Dissident Voice, well, you can go back to before 2010 and find any number of my commentaries-polemics-rants covering any number of topics with my anti-authority, anti-capitalism filter applied.
Templeton looks at the tools at the Man’s disposal for delving into official records, but there are other aspects of this culture in America where we are pigeon-holed and monitored. The very nature of how the worker has no rights, really, at work. CCTV in the workplace? Badges and photos. Reports on the job. Evaluations. Forced urine tests? Haircut codes? Is it fair or correct or ethical for anyone thinking of hiring me to even dive into all the journalism I’ve done, all the Op-eds I’ve written, all the Dissident Voice pieces I’ve penned? Of course not, but in today’s world, and even the world I was debating with, say, 20 years ago, the Americans — and unfortunately, this is the attitide for most people in the world — are perfectly fine with the employer or agency or government looking into your past. Sort of this shit idea of, “If you don’t have anything to hide, then why not let the employer or agency or government use that information. If it’s out there, and you posted it or wrote it, then you have to live with it.”
Some parts of your internet history are public record. This includes your social media profiles that you haven’t set to “private,” personal blog sites and any other information that you post publicly and share online. Because this information is public, anyone can read it, including a would-be employer. The employer doesn’t have to disclose that he’s looking at your public digital footprint, either. Under the Fair Credit Reporting laws, an employer only has to tell you that he’s going to run a background check when he uses a company in the business of compiling background information. If he checks you out himself, he can do it without telling you. (source)
That’s a more mellow quote, really, for what the American believes, both the Republican Leaning and the Democratic Party leaning. Hell, just yesterday, I was disagreeing with the guy working on my house, and he’s 69, broken body big time, and he can’t afford medical care for a bad knee and spinal disc issue, and he said his home he and his wife had down here was ripped out from under him after falling for Bush’s loan modification deal in 2008. Foreclosure, and now the place is listed at $750,000. All that equity down the drain. In the end, though, he constantly berates Trump, DeSantis, but he nary says a negative word against Biden or Pelosi. Every time a screw breaks on the job, he blames China, and he still believes Putin has entered our electoral system. I told him that the constant rant against Trump goes nowhere with me, since the rant is equally deserving for the Biden Bumbler. I told him that as a communist, err, socialist for most audiences, I have studied my position and politics and US domestic and international positions long enough to know a corrupt system when I see it or live under it. He said, “Well, then, why don’t you move to Russia if you’re communist.”
That is the penetrating and lubricating oil of this country. A 69 year old, broken down guy who thinks Russia is communist; working odd jobs, and he’s a musician, too, who lost that gig because of, well, greedy capitalist owner not able to keep a cook on at night; and he gives me the old heave ho, “Love it or Leave it.”
I reminded him that if Trump gets in, in 2024, that’s his country, his democratic party’s doing, the media’s doing, and with this love it or leave it mentality, well, the voters — his fellow citizens — have spoken and voted in their parasite, Trump. What then? Is he going to love it (Trump, the system) or leave it? He said he go to DC and kill Trump if he gets in in 2024. Literally go after him. More bluster from a Democrat.
There it is, though, this is AmeriKKKa. This place in 2022 is despicable, more so than I thought possible even in my lifetime. Truly, on many levels, and alas, I’m not 105 years old or ninety-something like Kissinger is, but at 65, with a robust anti-establishment and anti-government bent from a socialist POV, I know why we are here. At this late stage capitalism running the 80 percenters into the ground, we have the youth going for more brainwashing. Wacky.
There are many reasons you might blog about your job. You may want to brag about your accomplishments, vent about your cheese-moving coworkers or sociopathic boss, reveal whom you caught with whom on the floor of the server closet or simply recount the day’s events as a way of decompressing.
Whatever your reasons, if you blog, you take on all the liability and employment security risks that come with publishing to a potential readership of a billion people — even though the actual size of your audience may be just a handful of people or no one.
Work Blogging Risks
How is blogging different from just putting up a personal Web site? “The difference is that the easy-to-use tools available for blogging take away the barriers to getting online,” says Rebecca Jeschke, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties advocacy group.
The danger to blogging about your job comes when you allow no-brainer publishing technology — together with a mistaken sense of anonymity — to embolden you to record observations more appropriate for a private, paper-based journal than a global electronic network.
“People need to think long and hard about whether they’re comfortable blogging about work in an unprotected way,” Jeschke says.
One workplace blogger puts it even more plainly: “When you start a blog, you have to assume you’re going to be found out,” says the anonymous author of Waiter Rant, which chronicles the trials and tribulations of a New York City restaurant server.
Being fired for blogging, which is known as “getting dooced” in the blogosphere, really happens — and when it does, it often gets lots of news coverage. Delta Air Lines, Google, Ladies Home Journal, Wells Fargo and an Ohio congressman are among the employers that have reportedly terminated workers over their blogs. (Monster dot com)
So, all my work going up against many employers, filing appeals to denied unemployment, and then filing with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries several different cases of discrimination for being sacked for being old, a male, and radical, those future employers can tap into official files using middlemen surveillance services. All the words, all the articles, and some interviews of me in print and on video on the Internet, they too can be found and USED against me. All of that is just fine for prospective employers to scan and skim and to utilize in order to decide if I am a viable candidate for the job.
I’ve written about millions of Americans who have lost their driver’s license privileges because of debts, not because of driving while intoxicated or for other driving infractions. Because they owe for court costs, owe for back child support. Their job prospects are pretty grim without a license.
Suspending driver’s licenses as a penalty for non-payment of fines and fees unrelated to public safety is a self-defeating policy. It intensifies pressure on individuals already struggling with job loss and financial hardship, and it adds strain to relations between police officers and the public they serve. It makes the slope of failure even more slippery for millions of the most vulnerable Americans. And it’s the law of the land in 42 states.
So, that means the prospective employer can fish through another set of data bases — suspended licenses — and eliminate more people from the workforce. Most jobs require transportation, as they call it, reliable transportation with proof of auto insurance.
Predictable algorithms, and all that soft shoe, again, part of the shifting baseline, now accepted, DNA tests, blood tests, urine test, complying with any “background” check, then, of course, proof of mRNA, and, there you have it. We’ve gone from a majority of people coveting their privacy to a society that doesn’t care.
A society that doesn’t push back against their own “party,” since whichever manure party they may be backing is the right manure party. And, then, love it or leave it.
All of the conversations today are dead, since most Americans are colonized by bad education, patriotism, by really bad entertainment, by Legacy Mainstream Propaganda, by the entire hubris of exceptionalism.
Forget about the fact these Pharma Felons have a long rap sheet going way back on the injuries and deaths created by their so-called approved products. They can’t even get vials of their bioweapon off the assembly line without metal bits in millions of batches.
That’s Pfizer and the billionaire CEO, the Greek Jewish, boosted up twice after mRNA double jab, who is now hot with SARS-CoV2, and he is happy to have the oral drug his company produced. What to believe?
Plaxlovid.
Pfizer and vaccine maker Moderna, which also makes a two-shot mRNA vaccine, are updating their drug formulas to provide protection against newer versions of the virus as part of a fall booster campaign.
Paxlovid, a pill that is available by prescription after infection, helps patients avoid serious illness when it is administered shortly after the onset of symptoms.
I got the SARS-CoV2 a week ago, maybe from Trader Joe’s up in Corvallis. Nah, a summer flu? Nah, not acting like a natural pathogen in me. I have had malaria, dengue fever, a truck load of gut diseases, and slew of bug and jellyfish stings and bites. This bug does things that are not natural. Tied to HIV? Some see that it is a venom-like hit to the body.
I have heard person after person — young athletic people — tell me about being double vaxxed and getting SARS-CoV2 for nine days or two weeks, with pneumonia. And then, getting hit twice or three times with the bioweapon. I am talking about a surfer who is also an arborist — thin, super fit, and active.
And, we are not to talk about these stories, not put them out there on Facebook or Twitter, not supposed to talk about the patterns, anecdotal evidence which IS valid. RJK Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense now has been deplatformed from Facebook and Twitter, so we know more and more information gathering by us, the people, will be scrubbed.
Kennedy’s Facebook page, with more than 300,000 followers, was still active at the time of publication. The company spokesperson said there were no plans to take down that page “at this time.”
In a statement Thursday, provided by Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit group that he chairs, Kennedy pushed back at the assertion that his posts were false and accused Facebook of “censorship.”
Lois Gibbs of Love Canal fame would have been deplatformed in today’s messed up censorious world:
Love Canal is an aborted canal project branching off of the Niagara River about four miles south of Niagara Falls. It is also the name of a fifteen-acre, working-class neighborhood of around 800 single-family homes built directly adjacent to the canal. From 1942 to 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, with government sanction, began using the partially dug canal as a chemical waste dump. At the end of this period, the contents of the canal consisted of around 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals, including at least twelve that are known carcinogens (halogenated organics, chlorobenzenes, and dioxin among them). Hooker capped the 16-acre hazardous waste landfill in clay and sold the land to the Niagara Falls School Board, attempting to absolve itself of any future liability by including a warning in the property deed.
Public awareness of the disaster unfolded in the late 1970s when investigative newspaper coverage and grassroots door-to-door health surveys began to reveal a series of inexplicable illnesses—epilepsy, asthma, migraines, and nephrosis—and abnormally high rates of birth defects and miscarriages in the Love Canal neighborhood. As it turns out, consecutive wet winters in the late 1970s raised the water table and caused the chemicals to leach (via underground swales and a sewer system that drained into nearby creeks) into the basements and yards of neighborhood residents, as well as into the playground of the elementary school built directly over the canal. After a series of frustrating encounters with apathetic NYS officials, who were slow to act but quick to dismiss the activists (most of whom were working-class women who lived in the neighborhood) as a collection of hysterical housewives, President Jimmy Carter declared a state of emergency in 1978 and had the federal government relocate 239 families. This left 700 families who federal officials viewed as being at insufficient risk to warrant relocation, even though tests conducted by the NYS Department of Health revealed that toxic substances were leaching into their homes. After another hard battle, activists forced Carter to declare a second state of emergency in 1981, during which the remaining families were relocated. The total cost for relocation of all the families was $17 million. (source)
Then, how can any group of activists like RFK Jr.’s CHD coalesce in this messed up Google-Facebook-Twitter-Instagram world. What a bioweapon, no? SARS-CoV2!
Michael Carroll’s Lab 257 also documents a Nazi connection to the original establishment of a U.S. laboratory on Plum Island. According to the book, Erich Traub, a scientist who worked for the Third Reich doing biological warfare, was the force behind its founding.
During World War II, “as lab chief of Insel Riemsa secret Nazi biological warfare laboratory on a crescent-shaped island in the Baltic Sea, Traub worked for Adolph Hitler’s second-in-charge, SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, on live germ trials,” states Lab 257.
The mission was to develop biological warfare to be directed against animals in the Soviet Union. This included infecting cattle and reindeer with foot-and-mouth disease.
“Ironically, Traub spent the prewar period of his scientific career on a fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, perfecting his skills in viruses and bacteria under the tutelage of American experts before returning to Nazi Germany on the eve of war,” says “Lab 257.” While in the U.S. in the 1930s, too, relates the book, Traub was a member of the Amerika-Deutscher Volksbund which was involved in pro-Nazi rallies held weekly in Yaphank on Long Island.
With the end of the war, Traub came back to the United States under Project Paperclip, a U.S. program under which Nazi scientists, such as Wernher von Braun, were brought to America.
“Traub’s detailed explanation of the secret operation on Insel Riems” given to officials at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the Army’s biological warfare headquarters, and to the CIA, “laid the groundwater for Fort Detrick’s offshore germ warfare animal disease lab on Plum Island,” says “Lab 257.” “Traub was a founding father.” And Plum Island’s purpose, says the book, became what Insel Riems had been: to develop biological warfare to be directed against animals in the Soviet Union now that the Cold War and conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union had begun.
The Long Island daily newspaper Newsday earlier documented this biological warfare mission of Plum Island. In a lead story on November 21, 1993, Newsday investigative reporter John McDonald wrote: “A 1950s military plan to cripple the Soviet economy by killing horses, cattle and swine called for making biological warfare weapons out of exotic animal diseases at a Plum Island laboratory, now-declassified Army records reveal.” A facsimile of one of the records, dated 1951, covered the front page of that issue of Newsday. (source)
Oh, the nefarious work of former Nazi’s, and Lyme DIsease now! Pfizer working on that vaccine.
And we trust this multibillionaire, Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla: Pfizer has been a “habitual offender,” persistently engaging in illegal and corrupt marketing practices, bribing physicians and suppressing adverse trial results. Since 2002 the company and its subsidiaries have been assessed $3 billion in criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards.
I have a CPA in Tucson, from my mom’s days, and she wondered what my gmail signature block image was about:
I was asked to send her sources, since she is stuck in Mainstream Stenographer Media, and I asked her if she has Ukraine roots, and she said her husband’s family did. Both are Jewish.
Scott Ritter analyzes the situation at the nuclear power plant, Russia’s non-response, the situation on the ground, and Ukraine attacks Crimea. And a prediction on how all this will end. Here.
NATO ready to attack a Nuclear plant to ethnically cleanse Russians from Ukraine – George Eliason
I am not sure how much bandwidth she has for this stuff, but I warned her that if she really went through some of these sources, she will come out the other end depressed, ashamed, maybe. But who knows. I have daily people with TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome, and they have no grounding on anything that ties both the country’s manure pile parties into war, finance, lies, scams, hatred of the people. Here, a bunch of other sources from me to the CPA, Stephen Cohen, RIP.
This article is the fourth in a series of articles I have written covering the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. While this civil war in Ukraine actually began 8 years ago in 2014, the Western media narrative has portrayed this conflict as an unprovoked invasion by Russia that began on February 24, 2022. The 8 year civil war in the Donbass Region is a direct result of the US backed coup and color revolution known as the Maidan Revolution, that ousted the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installed an ultra-nationalist, anti-Russian, Nazi government.
The article goes on to explain that the majority of ethnic Russians in east and south Ukraine rejected the coup government. Crimea also voted to secede and was annexed into Russia. Then, unreported in MSM, Donetsk and Lugansk became breakaway provinces thus leaving Ukraine, but were soon invaded by Ukrainian Nazis who refused to give up the region. Western media rarely acknowledged the huge civilian death toll in eastern Ukraine. Then, Minsk Agreement accepted and afterwards not followed.
Following that, last year the Biden Administration sent more weapons and gave special forces training to Ukrainian Nazi paramilitaries. With those proxy events, in April 2021, Zelensky said he was not going to honor the Minsk 2 Agreement and was planning to retake the breakaway regions and Crimea by force. The US created this war by preparing Ukrainian forces for the invasion.
Did Russia underestimate how fiercely the Ukrainians would fight? Perhaps so. Did they make mistakes and lose soldiers and generals? Absolutely. Are they losing on the battlefield? Absolutely not and this is becoming more apparent to Western media that hasn’t wanted to outright admit it. It has downplayed the fact that Russia has taken much territory including Mariupol, Kherson and now 95% of Lugansk has been liberated from Ukrainian control. Western media outlets, such as Bloomberg News, are finally acknowledging the Russian victories in this region of the Donbass and that Ukrainian troops are now at risk of encirclement by Russian forces.
I continue to help people read beyond the propaganda lines deployed by the Nulands and Kagans and Zeleskys of the world.
What is worthy of praise is the pushback by independent journalists and media outlets against the lies reported daily in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, the BBC, NPR, etc. The well researched information coming from independent media and journalists, such as The Grayzone, Consortium News, The World Socialist Website, The Dive with Jackson Hinkle, Scott Ritter, Regis Tremblay shines a bright light on what the establishment media is distorting and ignoring. War reporters, Patrick Lancaster (USA), Eva K. Bartlett (Canada), Alejandro Kirk (HispanTV – Latin America) have exposed the Western media lies that Russia is responsible for the carnage and that civilians support Ukraine’s military. All Ukrainian civilians interviewed blame Ukraine for the deaths, injuries and destruction. Russians often bring in food and humanitarian aid.
I do ground-truthing from a very folksy and small-townish perspective. I have found myself “stuck” here on the Central Oregon Coast, really, where my own destiny seems etched in the crumbling sandstone holding up the tourist-laden Highway 101.
I’ve exhausted the labor market here, since the school district has banned me as a substitute teacher for, well, subbing and answering high school students’ questions about my work with homeless, with just released incarcerated, and those with substance abuse issues. Of Mice and Men, as well as Animal Farm, I was filling in for the teacher.
I was frog-marched out of the classroom halfway through third period. Banned for life, and, of course, this county has a major deficit in both full-time teachers and subs.
This is just one peek into a broken national system of idiocy. We’ll have the Pride Parade for the first time in Newport down here, September 16-18, but we have complete soiled minds in the school system. They aren’t teaching them to think, but then, we have this uncanny ability to truly ruin future generations with the fear porn of Pfizer and Fauci, all those mandates, the six-foot lines taped all over the schools, outside, masks for track and fiel events.
Children’s brains in adult heads. The school system is a reflection of the chronically ill teaching and administrative establishment. The virtue signaling rules, and no amount of smart critical thinking works with these youth anymore . . . . Except for those who drop out.
It is a hook and release and recapture and never let go again for each next cohort, next generation.
Other aspects of this county include so much cowardice and dysfunction. I can only imagine what is and is not off limits in the classroom now.
Alas, don’t just blame Texas, as this mentality is the stuff of Americans:
‘I am not upset. I’m enraged’: Administration asked school librarian to take down banned books display after one parent complained. ‘I serve over 700 students, not one student alone.’ (Source)
I am stuck (proverbially) in this most gorgeous of places. Stuck in that sort of Walden Pond perspective, albeit, more along the Dollar General Store sensibility.
I do have lofty philosophical ambitions:
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden, August 9, 1954
What I am finding is that I have dislocated myself from my earlier roots of working with my sleeves rolled up as a teacher. So much has passed under the bridge since 1983. Forty years is a drop in the geological bucket, I know, but from a 25-year-old’s perspective, up until now, with all that has broken down the collective human spirit largely on the back of capitalism, the writing was on the wall even then when I had so much hope for some enlightenment and change within the ranks of teaching in El Paso.
Being around youth, around first generation high school graduates, around young people who came from humble beginnings, I found at least some pride in working with them.
The disease of the Aministration Class, or the Provost Clan, all the waste that is a university — football field resurfacing and brand new library buildings and a top-down loading up of worthless institutional advancement creeps — it wasn’t enough then to infect me to throw in the towel.
Forty years later, well, so much in this country is broken, and so much about higher education is plain wrong. It’s all on this trajectory of truly a reset of values, or at least, in the USA, very few values for the majority of the people, now have been stripped. This concept of digitization of everything is easily digested by youth.
Where do they get these all-comers? That’s 87,000 more IRS armed agents. This is the Democrats, man:
An IRS job form seeking ‘Criminal Investigation Special Agents’ was briefly taken offline and edited on Wednesday after its language stoked outrage on social media, according to Fox News and other outlets. Though a previous version of the page (archived August 10) noted that “major duties” of the job would include carrying a firearm and being “willing to use deadly force, if necessary,” the listing visible on Thursday evening no longer contains that requirement.
Journalist Ford Fischer was among the first to note the mention of ‘deadly force’ in a series of tweets on Wednesday. Less than 24 hours later the agency had taken down the notice, removed the offending bullet-point and reuploaded it. (Source)
The US society is so geared to complete rip-off of the 80 percent, those of us not in the point zero-zero percent, One Percent or captured inside the 19 percenters who are the true enemies of the people. The Eichmann’s. The hatchet men and women. The Dream Hoarders.
This at the Aspen Institute, that “institute”: The Aspen Institute is largely funded by foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, by seminar fees, and by individual donations.
Trees and a High School Drop Out Making His Way in LaLa Land
September’s here, the month that brings in Fall. Looking at the national holiday list for September (celebratory themes), I notice over 30 “themes” celebrated or commemorated. Here are just a few:
National Hispanic Heritage
Childhood Obesity
Childhood Cancer
Self-Improvement
Honey
Potato
Pain Awareness
Intergenerational
Prostate
Diving into that intergenerational theme, I realize I’ve been intently interfacing with people decades younger than I am. In Waldport, Portland, Spokane, Seattle, and Alaska, I have talked with people thirty and forty years my junior.
I have deep conversations with some of the houseless rough sleepers in Waldport: guys that are in their thirties who have taken to life outside the “norms” of job, home, roots. Much of what I have discovered is trauma piled onto each individual since childhood. I hearken to Dr. Gabor Mate:
“From early infancy, it appears that our ability to regulate emotional states depends upon the experience of feeling that a significant person in our life is simultaneously experiencing a similar state of mind.” (documentary, “The Wisdom of Trauma”).
I’ve met one young guy at a Newport pharmacy who had dreams of being a marine biologist but whose poor health limited that aspiration.
I’ve got a book out, “Coastal People inside a Deep Dive,” featuring amazing Lincoln County folk from my column at Oregon Coast Today. Many of those I featured were both old and young, and every age in between.
Every day I meet amazing young people in various stages of their wonderful evolutions. Many are living with complex PTSD. Others are working through financial strain. Each conversation with someone younger than I takes me to their spiritual home.
Listening is important in today’s age. Many old timers say in the old days we listened more, engaged more with people outside our socio-economic and cultural-ethnic backgrounds.
I’ve had deep conversations with Chuck Ellard who runs Newport’s Pacific Digital printing (“Finding a path“). I’ve written about him, and he is featured in the Coastal People book. He’s in his late thirties, just had a son, and moved from Logsden to Seal Rock. He sees himself as a vital member of the community, assisting individuals with their framing needs or getting huge printing jobs from the Lincoln County School District.
A young woman who is working in a five and dime tells me of her dreams of being a writer, and wants to major in literature at U of O. A single parent’s health issues forced her to help pay the bills, so she is in a holding pattern working 50 hours a week. She has a real grace in this derailed point in her life.
I’ve been spending a few hours with a “tree man,” an arborist. Tyler Muth is from Waldport, went to school here, and now this 29-year-old has his own tree service business. He is tall and lanky. Think of a bearded young Brad Pitt.
Muth likes climbing trees. He respects the tree and encourages people to keep healthy trees.
He uses ropes to climb and small chain saws and handsaws. He knows the species of trees, and he is studying for certification through the International Society of Arboriculture.
We talk about Tyler’s years trying to make it as a pro surfer. He likes hitting waves, and he’s surfed up and down the Pacific Coast. He first competed when he was 12.
His business, Dr. Hingewood, allows for some free surf time. He’s worked in construction, and he even did a stint for a mobile slaughter house killing and dressing cows. He tired of that job, as he says it got to him: “I don’t like killing animals. I don’t own a gun. I even had a hard time last week killing a fish.”
He’s done some gnarly jobs, up in big timber, and those cuts are dangerous. He knows his back cuts (the third and final cut made on the opposite side of the notch). His business’ name, Dr. Hingewood, ties into how the portion of a tree left uncut – the hinge — can control the direction of the fall.
We talk about family, and he isn’t married and says doesn’t want children. “My freedom and lifestyle would make it difficult to raise a child. I like my freedom to just pick up and go surfing.”
He’s a businessman with a contractor’s license, and he says he has challenges keeping guys on payroll since many just pick up and take off for other gigs, like building wind turbines or commercial fishing.
He is a self-described tree nerd. I’ve written many stories about arborists, urban forestry programs and the value of trees in places like Spokane and Seattle. Out here, Tyler works with mostly private customers, usually with nuisance trees.
We both look up at the aging cypress on the neighbor’s property overhanging my wife and my backyard. He sees the canopy, the architecture of the tree, the hidden deadwood and fossilized wood in the middle of the trunk.
That sky — those crows, the giant unruly evergreen, blue herons squawking – gets Tyler and I talking. He’s an easy-going man with keen sense of follow- through. I listen; he listens. He tells me about the time a 14-foot great white shark “sort of just appeared” under him while he was surfing off the Oregon coast.
This is the kind of intergenerational discourse we all need. We talk about how men struggle to communicate and to know themselves.
Tyler goes about life with an even keel, he says, and while he isn’t blind to the world, he tells me that he is not so engaged in huge political debates.
“I keep busy. I love trees.” He relishes climbing, figuring out what to cut, and how to get that cut wood down without breaking a patio or his own neck.
We both interject our “almost broke my neck” stories. This is intergenerational communication at its best, looking up at a 100-year-old busted up cypress.
Diet for these whales?
![NASA]](https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/Images/science/EM_spectrum_compare_level1_lg.jpg){kind=link}