… how long will my local rag keep publishing my 1,000-word (no, a thousand ain’t long form, but in today’s bumper sticker and Tweeting Society, it is a TOME) screeds?

In 2025, the Wood Snake is set to inspire profound personal and societal growth. Professor Jonathan H. X. Lee, an expert in Asian and Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, highlights that the snake’s symbolism is linked to shedding toxicity, both in personality and character.

“It’s shedding the ego, letting go of the past, letting go of anger, letting go of love lost,” Lee explains.

This focus on transformation and growth is central to the snake’s nature. The snake, a symbol of intelligence and perseverance, encourages individuals to release bad habits and unrealistic expectations, making room for personal and collective evolution.

Can you believe that, with the Rapist in Chief, Trump, in the seat of the narcissistic hell-hole he is cerating. Empire of Lies of Hate of Chaos of War of Theft of Genocide.

Oh, the Zodiac!

By Paul Haeder (original publication, Jan. 29)

Snakes are revered for their ability to shed their skin and renew themselves, symbolizing transformation and rebirth.

I can see over 200 celebrations for the Month of January. It seems that the USA is a Hallmark card infused society.

The Dragon (2024) is flashy and energetic, but the Snake is mysterious and subtle. The Snake brings a new influence that is more refined and elegant. The Year of the Snake starts on Jan. 29, 2025 and end on Feb. 16, 2026. Prosperity is the snake’s characteristic.

2025 is the year of the Wood Snake, a unique alignment that adds additional layers of meaning. In Daoism, the wood element signifies a return to one’s true nature, while in Confucianism, it symbolizes self-cultivation and refinement. In Buddhist thought, the wood element is associated with letting go to foster growth. These connections deepen the significance of this year, encouraging both individual reflection and societal change.

Imagine that, a world of complete lies, the emblematic role of genocide and bulldozing culture, schools, life, futures by the Empire of Supremacy, Israel, with many many helping hands, and so, where is the reflection when I can’t hear or see or get going a conversation about the hell-hole “over there.”

Listen:

Number one is that the U.S. is signaling that international law is obsolete, that they tossed it into the garbage. The international rule-based order is no longer valid, because you have here someone with arrest warrants on his head by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity being honored in Washington, D.C., and in the White House, the highest executive branch of government.

At the same time, the other significance is Trump has been showering Netanyahu, lavishing him and his far-right extremist ministers with an enormous, unprecedented gift bag from the moment he walked into office. Some of these gifts are under the pretext of bribing Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire, but other elements in there have to do more with an extremist, messianic pro-Israeli agenda. So, for example, you have a U.S. immediate lifting of all sanctions on Israeli settlers and extremist groups that the Biden administration imposed. You also have an immediate process to sanction the International Criminal Court and collapse it because it dared to go after Israel. You have that visit to Washington, that Biden was reluctant to extend to Netanyahu despite Biden’s full complicity in the Gaza genocide. And you have other gift bags that are being showered on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu to buy their complicity and silence.

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I’m also thinking about our youth, I can understand the importance of recent studies on happiness and unhappiness.

“The research sort of shocked us,” Dartmouth University Professor David Blanchflower said in a lecture on his findings early in 2024. “All of a sudden … we started to actually observe something going on, which was a rapid decline in the wellbeing of young people, particularly for young women, but the trends for young men were the same.”

Today, he explained, around one in nine young women in America report every day of their lives being a bad mental health day. The trend goes for 43 other countries.

Every day I run into all manner of people — ages, genders, backgrounds — who report their fears of the USA using them, the 80 percent, as a “dumping ground” or a “whipping post” for all the country’s economic and sociological ills.

We are talking about old women crying to me about their fear of losing social security. Or young people fearful of a deadened economic future with artificial intelligence and robotics crippling the labor market.

Social media, cellphones and the post-COVID era are not the determining factors for this shocking mental health crisis.

There continues to be stacked upon stacks of old/uncorrected history of this country being a settler colonial empire, one which for many young people is an empire of “chaos, lies and penury.”

These happiness studies are deep and far-ranging. There are dozens of variables the studies consider — national economy, living standards, and local services are just a few of dozens of factors queried.

Young people, age 14 to 29, with downward happiness. We know people with disabilities, less education, broken families, and lost jobs are hit hard by the effects of aging. Many I talk with are not getting the social/emotional support they need.

But our young people? Our future? Clinical depression?

There are no Martin Luther Kings around to inject hope and tenable happiness into our youth. And without dynamic, truthful and universally understanding leaders, there are no rudders from which young people can steer their lives.

“With patient and firm determination, we will press on until every valley of despair is exalted to new peaks of hope, until every mountain of pride and irrationality is made low by the leveling process of humility and compassion; until the rough places of injustice are transformed into a smooth plane of equality of opportunity; and until the crooked places of prejudice are transformed by the straightening process of bright-eyed wisdom.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The third Monday in January, is it for MLK? It’s dubbed as “National Day of Service,” as well as Civil Rights Day (since 1999).

With the internet, young people can access the writings of Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, Dorothy Day, the Berrigan Brothers, Rigoberta Menchú, Frederick Douglass, King, Wangarĩ Maathai, or those living heroes like Francesca Albanese and David Swanson.

But I’ve found that young people, as well as ignorant adults, need much scaffolding of this information, in order to contextualize and critically analyze these sparsely exposed perspectives and histories.

Because of the power of the cellphone/smart phone to distract and manipulate, we are considered in a time of massive distraction and deep lack of awareness of the world around us. Thus, ignorance and lack of agency can hobble young people into believing what they think and might want to accomplish are of no importance in a society that valorizes the rich, powerful, hateful, aggressive and fascistic.

This youth unhappiness is a major handicap for Western societies. The wonks and sociologists have no idea what is actually behind a global downturn in young people’s happiness?

Awareness is a start, but also a deep societal ramping up of respecting families, communities, mom and pop/bricks and mortar stores, teachers, laborers, working class citizens, forests, rivers, skies, seas, wetlands, deserts and the like needs to take place. The real gauge of a society is how it treats its more vulnerable citizens, and how the young people are progressing.

“What’s the point of getting involved …

of protesting …

of fighting back.

You can’t fight the federal government.

You can’t fight city hall.”

I refer to the Chinese saying about America now — xīn lǐ yě luàn — which means chaotic and primordial mind. It is also called short-termism, this American mindset.

Imagine a Biden or Trump saying this, inserting USA in place of China.

“Of course, China is by no means perfect, and it is still faced with many challenges, yet I also believe that with China’s extraordinary achievements over the past 75 years, we will be able to overcome these challenges and do even better in the years and decades to come.” — Professor Zhang Weiwei, dean of the China Institute at Fudan University

Here we are now: Year of the Snake representing wisdom, knowledge, intelligence, intuition, and creativity. Can the West lift itself up from this chaotic and muddled mind?

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.” — MLK

Paul Haeder is a novelist, journalist, educator and author of “Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam,” Cirque Press.

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Everything about the Rapist in Chiefs Biden and Trump stand for is evil, stupidity, knee-jerking chaos, destruction.

On January 15, after a year-long trial, ten jurors found four major U.S. military contractors—Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed and General Atomics—guilty on charges of willfully participating in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

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Those are the big ones, but here:

More than 3,500 companies and mom and pop’s and little LLC’s are putting their merchant of death fingers into the pot:

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is an American fighter jet, but being an American fighter jet doesn’t mean it is fully American. Take a closer peak at the F-35, and one can find the fingerprints of many US allies in it. For example, the British supply many components (especially for the F-35B variant). Even Turkey supplied components for the jet before the US kicked Turkey out of the program. Not all jets are assembled in the US; Japan is assembling their F-35As in Japan, while many Europeans assemble theirs in Europe with final check out in Italy.

KNOW YOUR ROLE in MERCHANDISING DEATH!