thank god for eels, marine science, the probing minds of people who want the world to be better

Yeah, met this guy, Mork X Twain, at a 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, gong from Newport to the Bay Area, and he said he’s 82, and estranged from his children but has contact with grandkids.

He 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, and 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 Clemmons. He has not 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.

I’m 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 Hyde, Alaska to be with her boyfriend and friends and bury 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 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, 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 absorbing plenty of wins and losses, ups and downs.

Then 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), called, catadromous fish 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 the point of 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 absolute amount of trauma we — Homo Sapiens, Homo Consumopethicus, Homo Retailerectus, inflict on our own species. This war here, this famine here, this corporation poisoning this land there, these murderers and thieves doing what they can to be at the top of their manure piles.

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 Zionist 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 elimination diet, finding which inflammatory ingredient culls joints or flurries brain fog.

The fog 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, foreground and the Biden Background, are 21st Century monsters:

But this is Halloween, so more monsters:

Her hubby, Robert Kagan:

Not sure how these headlines and images play in the minds of Ukrainian cannon fodder: “Biden Appoints Five Jews to Top Posts, Boy, Are their Mothers Proud“
By David Israel

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, and the militaristic attitude, and the racism against Russia/Russians, all of this is important, for sure, and who knows what percentages mean, what diversity loading can achieve, and what we are 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 and against Israel’s apartheid state, and 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 the Homo Sapiens have become, from our tribal roots, our hunter and gatherer roots, to this, really, trillions for Blackrock, for Oil, for War, and so much of the Complex — military-medical-pharma-mining-chemical-media-entertainment-legal-ag-prison-surveillance-finance-banking COMPLEX. Crazy days, man: “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, Oct. 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, versus totalitarian everything. 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.

Video and podcasts.

What is that end game. Pretending we have hope. Derrick Jensen a long time ago: End Game. If we do not go through a voluntary transformation, what do we do? Imagine all minerals, metals, plastics, time and energy put into those weapons, and then the dead, the dying, the witnesses. Can civilization be sustainable?

This toxic culture, and trauma, and Gabor Mate does it well 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.