ironies, contradictions, a case of a thousand elephants in the room stampeding
Cornel West said to the imperialism-compatible “left”:
“You’re still locked into a very knee-jerk defense of NATO so that the militarism still goes on—everybody knows if Russia had troops in Mexico or Canada there would be invasions tomorrow.”
Some call it discordance, or the fabric of seeing, hearing, speaking no evil, or the converse, seeing-hearing-speakng evil always in THAT direction.
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No, Putin is not Hitler, and alas, concision is the powerful automatic rifle of the propagandists, and we know they — double-speakers and news-speakers — are not just press flacks or spokespersons, and not just the handlers and the focus group creeps, but also the very people we supposedly vote into office to represent us.
So, we can miss the point of a people-centric form of organizing and developing communities that are vibrant, cohesive, resilient, creative and supportive to all those who are there, in it, to be part of a community of place and community of thought and purpose.
But then, a termor comes through the spinal column, to the point of crying and laughing and looking for the T-Ball bat:
Ahh, then there is Bill McKibben, who wants a green army, and wants Russia blasted away:
First, he’s a fucking English teacher, but besides that, he’s a fascist inside, and look at his bullshit empty brained lack of history:
We are worlds apart now, one of us terrorized amid the wreckage of invaded Ukraine and the other entirely safe in the United States. But because we’ve been engaged in the same global fight against fossil fuels for decades, we are well-situated to see some of the key drivers behind this wretched moment, and hence some of the solutions.
Above all, it’s obvious that the world’s banks have amorally worked to build Russia’s oil and gas industry, the industry that funds the Russian army, and the industry that Vladimir Putin has used as a cudgel for decades to keep Europe cowering. And that’s why we cheered so loudly Tuesday when President Biden — as part of his ban on Russian oil — told American banks to make no new investments in Putin’s oil. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted, it strikes at the heart of Putin’s war machine.
And it is what more than a million people around the world — and more than 75 prominent NGOs — have demanded. Indeed, Wall Street and the banks must go further and stop the ongoing funding of fossil fuels everywhere, because they are the bulwark of autocracy and the death of the natural world. The sooner we replace oil, gas and coal with cheap, safe renewable energy, the sooner we can all live in peace. (source)
He cites M. Jacobson as the solutionary for our global woes, tied to climate change.
Last August, Mark Jacobson, a renewable energy expert and senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, was the leader of a study that identified how 139 countries around the world could obtain 100% of their energy from renewable sources by 2050. But that study got some pushback from people who questioned its assumptions. The naysayers said the study relied too heavily on energy storage solutions such as adding turbines to existing hydroelectric dams or storing excess energy in water, ice, and underground rocks. (source)
These are the technocrats, the lizard people, who have tidy minds and just know what the rest of the world, us, needs. In the end, these whippersnappers want green fascism, want digital control (fascism, tracking, you will be happy and own nothing mentality/PSYOPS), want a world uploaded and fixed onto a pay for succes model (digital fascism), and these fools have zero compassion for people — the others, you know, 70 percent of the world, not the so-called Golden Billion.
It’s as if this professor — Billy Bob Burning Man McKibben — is deficient in so many nutrients, as he believes Ukraine is some wonderland? Dirty Nazi’s, Dirty Proving Grounds for Weapons, Dirty Bio-weapons Joint, Dirty Corrupt Ukraine, and alas, the shitty control of everyone’s money, pay, bills, taxes, what have you. Blackrock anyone?
[USAID’s DC rollout of the dystopian Diia “state in a smartphone” app introduced by the government of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. Parampil and Blumenthal discuss how the Ukrainian conflict zone has been turned into a profitable laboratory for corporations seeking to profit from the harvesting of personal data from the war-torn population, how it is used to control and intimidate Ukraine’s population, and how this disturbing technology is being exported throughout the global south.]
These preachers of austerity are the Mengeles and Goebbels of our time.
And they are green, man, green — look at this Kraut, lecturing to Brazil, with a 20 percent poverty rate, telling them to instaneously feed the military war machine (the West’s merchants of death and stocks and bonds) in dirty Ukraine: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has called on Brazil to align with other democracies on geopolitical matters, particularly regarding its stance on the Ukraine war and China, and is offering a closer relationship in exchange.
Brazil is the only country among emerging democracies that have so far backed all UN resolutions against Russia’s war in Ukraine but still refuses to send Ukraine aid. Brazil also maintains a particularly close relationship with China, its top trading partner.
“Security and development are not opposites. They depend on each other,” Baerbock said at the Digital Democracy Festival in São Paulo, pointing to the global impact of rising food prices due to the war, warning that democracies could thus not show restraint in geopolitical questions.
It’s a pretty good one, this episode, looking at the counter-offensive of UkroNaziLandia, looking at RFK, Jr. and his love of Israel and condemning Roger Waters, and then the pathetic Amy Soros Goodman grilling Dr. Cornel West.
Now now, wouldn’t it be great if the so-called greens were anti-Imperialists, or were deeply rooted in food, fish, air, soil, people’s rights to live and to not be under the coffin nail or thumb of the Anglo-Saxon hell!
Ahh, contrast sicko Bill and Greta with:
Ahh, Bill and Greta, nope!
In this Rising Tide Foundation presentation featuring Jim O’Brien, Chair of the Irish Climate Science Forum introduces the reality of climate science, while debunking the pervasive belief in human-driven global warming, and outline what a healthy energy and climate science looks like.
Speaker Bio: Jim O’Brien is “retired” after a 39-year career in CRH plc, the leading multinational building materials group, for the latter 19 years being its Group Technical Advisor. He now is Honorary President of the European Aggregates Association and Convenor of the Global Aggregates Information Network (www.GAIN.ie).
He founded and chairs the Irish Climate Science Forum (www.ICSF.ie), an independent think-tank on climate science and energy policy, which cooperates with the Dutch-based CLINTEL (www.CLINTEL.org). He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, of the Irish Academy of Engineering and of the UK Institution of Engineering and Technology and is a Life Senior Member of the US Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Fun stuff hearing Oliver Stone hawk his new documentary on nuclear energy. Missing?
indigenous knowledge and participatory governing
who writes the checkbook for nuclear power, and who gets the profits
what world are we hoping for . . . are there concerns about the shit we see now with Ukraine and USA and Israel going after nuclear facilities . . .
Oliver’s valorizing these so-called smartest people in the room, nuclear scientists, and alas, he’s stoked baby, stoked . . .
what is this world like, this Jetson’s world, this world of endless electricity
plastics, inequity, and this huge system of nuclear material mining, etc.
sure, here, we have some questions about how to deal good and caring and mutual aid to Haiti, Congo, Yemen, Cuba . . . versus this rush for so-called clean energy, for what
Ahh, fucking Kennedy, another rotten celebrity, goofball: Listen to Roger defend himself! [556,692 views Jun 6, 2023/ You’ve read the lies, now hear THE TRUTH]
Here’s someone I follow on Substack, and it’s a call to revolutionaries and communists to vote for Cornel West: “Hurting the Democratic Party is essential for revolutionaries, & voting Cornel West is our best way to do this”
At this moment, the best thing we can do to weaken the Democratic Party’s monopoly over organizing spaces is back Cornel West. Communists should vote for him not because he’s a communist, which he isn’t, but because voting for him will have an impact that advances our cause. What it will do is greatly expand the fissure that’s long been developing within the country’s left, the fissure that makes the communist movement better able to grow outside the DNC’s influence.
Here, a few years ago (12!!):
Cornel West praises Occupy Seattle movement at Green River Community College
Princeton professor, author and activist Cornel West urged the 300 people who gathered for his Nov. 16 talk at Green River Community College to go beyond getting credentialed and pursue a “deep education.”
It would not be easy, he warned his audience, about half of them students: “In the process of being educated you have to learn how to die in order to live.”
Drawing on Plato and Malcom X, West said the death process is part of real education — paideia — a concept developed by Socrates that means deep, critical thinking.
It is the antithesis of contemporary culture: “The problem in American society is we are a culture of death-denying, death-dodging… a joyless culture where pleasure-seeking replaces what it means to be human.”
Fresh from a trip to Occupy Seattle earlier in the day, West praised the movement, which he said represents “a deep democratic awakening where people are finding the courage to find their voice.”
Greed has corroded society, he said.
“Market moralities and mentalities — fueled by economic imperatives to make a profit at nearly any cost — yield unprecedented levels of loneliness, isolation and sadness. Our public life lies in shambles, shot through with icy cynicism and paralyzing pessimism. To put it bluntly, beneath the record-breaking stock markets on Wall Street and bipartisan budget-balancing deals in the White House, lurk ominous clouds of despair across this nation.”
West said that in this age of fear, economic instability and employment challenges, young people must learn “to have a love of wisdom, love of your neighbors and love of justice.”
Such love, embedded in our cultural and social justice traditions, is powerful, he said.
“That Coltrane love, that subversive love. It’s there in the Occupy Wall Street movement. … When it’s organized and mobilized, love is a threat.”
+—+
Ahh, that dirty Nation Magazine: “Cornel West Should Not Be Running for President” He doesn’t see a third party playing a spoiler role to Democrats as bad—and that’s inevitable.
Even Newsweek does a tad bit better in their bad-bad writing:
And within that group, most favors heightened government intervention in solving social problems, higher corporate taxes, and a higher federal minimum wage at a time Biden has largely been forced to compromise with a conservative—if fractured—majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
West—a several-times surrogate for Sanders’ campaigns—seeks to take ownership of progressive policy issues from what he describes as the “milquetoast” progressivism of the Biden administration, which he claims is ill-equipped to overcome the policies of the right. And by embracing those policy positions, he claims, he’ll be able to win over those on the left and right alike.
“You cannot defeat Neo fascism by milquetoast neoliberalism,” West said Monday. “There’s no way you can do it. You’ve got to get at the roots of it. You’ve got to bring vision and passion to convince people not to follow Neo fascist Pied Pipers, but actually let them know that there are persons on the so called left—which is simply to say persons of integrity, honesty and decency—looking at the world through the lens of poor and working people. That’s really what it is. So I don’t want to get into the labels. I’m talking about the substance.”
Ahh, leavers and takers:
Desert Pete was lost in a desert and dying of thirst when he found an old water pump. Next to the water pump was a note and a jar full of water. Travelers were warned in the note not to drink the water but to use it to prime the pump. If they did this, having faith in the person who wrote the note and built the pump, they would be rewarded with plenty of fresh, cool water to quench their thirst and enough to fill the jar for the next traveler.
Many desperate travelers surely were tempted to forget about priming the pump and thought to immediately drink the water readily available. But, that’s what a Taker would do, and you can see the detrimental effect that would have on those who came after.
It becomes a matter of faith, trust, and a decision about how to live when faced with a situation like the thirsty traveler, but when we choose to live like Leavers the note promises there will be water for all!
Ahh, Leavers versus levers.
25 years ago, Daniel Quinn published the novel, Ishmael. This revolutionary book was awarded the 1991 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, which was established to encourage authors to seek “creative and positive solutions to global problems.” Quinn’s message has transformed the lives of millions of readers who feel inspired to share the story with family, friends, neighbors and acquaintances. Listen for a conversation with Daniel Quinn about Ishmael, writing and where we go from here.
In March, more than 80 organisations and academics working on climate action called on the EU to reject voluntary carbon credit schemes as a solution to the climate crisis, after it was revealed that 90% of forest carbon credits sold by the certifier, Verra, are largely worthless. These ‘phantom’ credits, which companies buy to ‘offset’ their carbon emissions rather than changing their business models, make global warming worse.
This is not news to many farming and Indigenous communities in the global south, where carbon credit schemes have been operating since at least the early 1990s. These schemes are not just flawed as climate solutions; they have perpetrated devastating human rights abuses and land grabs. In Uganda, a forest carbon ‘restoration’ scheme run by Dutch NGO Face the Future evicted thousands of people using paramilitary rangers and soldiers so the forest could be ring-fenced for carbon credits. In East Africa, pastoralist Indigenous Samburu, Borana and Rendille people are under threat from the Northern Rangeland Trust’s (NRT) carbon offset project. Community-led conservation must be embraced, and green colonialism rejected; small-scale farmers and Indigenous peoples continue to be disproportionately affected by the ‘green rush’. (source)
Leavers: Farm Land Grab!
This website contains news about the global rush to buy or lease farmlands by agribusiness, governments and financial investors — and people’s resistance against it. Its purpose is to serve as a resource for those monitoring, researching or organising around the issue, particularly activists, non-government organisations and journalists. It was initially set up by GRAIN, to share evidence of the new global farmland grab documented in Seized: The 2008 land grab for food and financial security.
Starting in 2023, we have expanded the scope of the site to include land grabs for carbon farming. These are corporate initiatives that take land away from local communities in order to produce carbon credits, which are used by companies to offset their climate emissions, for international markets. Our coverage of this trend is limited to cases that involve the grabbing of farmland for the large-scale planting of crops and/or trees and are contested by local communities.
“You tell the truth about catastrophe,” West said in his announcement on actor Russell Brand’s Stay Free podcast Monday.
“On the one hand, you authorize a different future in light of a different conception of time in the present, and then you improvise. And you improvise based on what? Because you love something bigger than yourself.”
Elephants in the room, man. If you do not look at who controls so many parts of those levers of power, and if you can’t recognize their goals, and see them as an enemy against humankind, then, you will be trampled slowly, a slow death under Casino-Chlamydia-Disaster-Penury-Polluting-War Mongering-Enslavement-Zombified Capitalism.
Daniel Quinn One of the great puzzles that people have is that when they tell someone about the book, they say “Well, what’s it about?” (laughs), and that’s really a difficult one. What people have told me is that it changed their life. Yeah, I’ve heard this a thousand times, I’m not making it up. And they thank me for showing them that they’re not crazy, because the people around them have been telling them for years that they’re crazy. Some people thank me for giving them hope, because it is a message that has a kernel of hope when I think hope is very desperately needed.
Rob Kall: Well, you wrote the book, and it won Ted Turner’s Tomorrow Fellowship Award, and the funny thing is, I remember ripping the ad announcing the contest out of the New York Times. I’ve had some fantasies of being a Science Fiction writer at different times in my life; I’ve never really done it, but then the next thing I know, you won that award.
Part of the requirements of that award was that it be a hopeful vision of the future. Did you write it thinking, “I’m going to write this for this contest,” or — how did it come about that you wrote it?
Daniel Quinn It began twelve years before that. I knew I had something to write, and that was desperately important. ‘Important’ means “What I was born to write.” And I wrote a book; it wasn’t what I wanted, and I wrote another one — call it ‘versions.’ Over the next twelve years, I wrote eight versions, each one striving to be the book that I wanted it to be, and I left behind all seven of them. The eighth one was Ishmael.
Ishmael was the first one that had a telepathic gorilla in it. All of the others were different. Oh, yeah — about the Turner Tomorrow Award: that was definitely a nudge in a direction that I hadn’t had before. My wife had been telling me for years that I should write it as a novel, and I’d resisted that, thinking that people wouldn’t take it seriously if I wrote it as a novel. But the Turner Tomorrow Award was looking for a book that described my book very well. So I wrote it for the first time as a novel, and that’s when Ishmael was born.
Rob Kall: Did you have contact with Ted Turner in response to this book?
Daniel Quinn Yes, some contact; a bit on to odd contact. He was not comfortable with me. I think it was partly because first, Ted set out on this thing, he wanted to do this thing, because he wanted to make a movie. He was looking for a novel he could use as the basis for a movie. And the first thing his advisers told him: “You can’t write a movie out of this book” – which is what the judges had given him. So he had spent two million dollars basically getting something that he couldn’t use. Of course, he wouldn’t say that to me at the time we met; and it’s funny that the person that I was most in contact with, who was the head of Turner Publishing, said “We’re sort of playing down the gorilla thing, you know – not talking about the gorilla.”
And I said “Well, OK…”
And so when I met Ted, the first thing he said to me was, “Why a Gorilla?” (laughs) And I burst out laughing! And I’m sure he thought I was laughing at him, whereas I was laughing at this other person, who had said “We are trying to keep this quiet!” And of course, “Why a gorilla?” has been a question that’s been asked of me almost everywhere ever. Everywhere I’ve ever been, someone has asked that question.
Rob Kall: Why a gorilla?
Daniel Quinn Why a gorilla? Because what was needed was a voice from the living community, but not a human voice, and the gorilla was the first thing that came to mind. It couldn’t have been a pelican, or a shark, or a deer. It had to be a figure that would be believable, and carry weight; and of course, a gorilla carries a lot of weight.
My Ishmael: A Sequel
Unbeknownst to the narrator of Ishmael, a second pupil responded to the ad in the paper – twelve-year-old Julie Gerchak, whose interaction with Ishmael results in a dialogue strikingly different from the one found in Ishmael.
When Ishmael placed an advertisement for pupils with “an earnest desire to save the world,” he does not expect a child to answer him. But twelve-year-old Julie Gerchak is undaunted by Ishmael’s reluctance to teach someone so young, and convinces him to take her on as his next student.
Ishmael knows he can’t apply the same strategies with Julie that he used with his first pupil, Alan Lomax – nor can he hope for the same outcome. But young Julie proves that she is ready to forge her own spiritual path – and arrive at her own destination. And when the time comes to choose a pupil to carry out his greatest mission yet, Ishmael makes a daring decision – a choice that just might change the world.
An excerpt from My Ishmael:
“You know,” I said, “there’s something you could do that would help me a lot. I don’t know if I have any business asking, but there it is.”
Ishmael frowned. “Have I given you the impression that my program here is not subject to change? Do I really seem to you so rigid that I’m unwilling to accommodate you?”
Oops, I said to myself, but after thinking about it for bit, I decided not to be apologetic. I said to him, “It’s probably been a long time since you were a twelve-year-old girl talking to a thousand-pound gorilla.”
“I don’t see what my weight has to do with it,” he snapped.
“Well, all right, a hundred-year-old gorilla.”
“I’m not a hundred years old, and I weigh less than six hundred pounds.”
“Good Lord,” I said. “This is beginning to sound like something from Alice in Wonderland.” Ishmael chuckled and asked me what he could do that would be helpful.
“Tell me what you think the world would be like if we actually did manage to ‘start living a different way.’”
And so it goes, modern day pastoralists:
“Interview with Maasai pastoralist Ole Mepukori”/ FEB 26, 2023
Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Ole.
Grateful for the opportunity.
We’re going to speak today about pastoralism and how wildlife conservation poses a threat to this livelihood. But first could you explain briefly what pastoralism is in an African context?
Pastoralism is life. It is our lived reality. It is food, healthcare, social protection, dowry, housing. Basically without pastoralism we die.
For someone who hasn’t been to Kenya, could you explain what parks like Tsavo, location of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, look like and the place of the Maasai and their livestock in these Protected Areas, historically and in the present day?
The Tsavo National Park covers an area 22,000 km², approximately 3.78% of Kenya. Growing up, we would move our cattle herds to the Tsavo when droughts were too harsh. Before this expansive grassland was carved out and protected, they were dry season pasture lands for the Maasai people. Our forebears grew up, lived, thrived, raised families and died here.
Our people call this rich grassland Olaililai. The name Tsavo is a colonial erasure of history and the history of the people. To the oppressors we did not exist and we still do not exist.
The soil is sandy and the grass cover is lush during the wet season and very nutritious for the cattle. It is a very hard environment when it is dry. Water is scarce and livestock move long distances to the watering points.
You recently had livestock impounded. Could you tell us more about this event and how the denial of pasture rights for your herds impacts both your livestock and your livelihood?
The policy to impound Maasai livestock in the Tsavo has been ongoing for about a decade. Before that they used to arrest the herders and impose fines. They would also use low flying fixed wing planes to round up and chase down the cattle off the park. They would pour corrosive chemicals on the cows from the planes. Our people lost huge numbers of cows to this.
This two-pronged strategy failed as a deterrence and they introduced huge cattle prisons in the parks. As we speak, there is a permanent fixed wing plane that spots and chases down the cattle, boots on the ground of ferocious drug-fuelled and heavily armed rangers who show no mercy to unarmed Maasai cattle herders and the cattle prisons where impounded livestock go to die of starvation and thirst.
Impounding livestock and issuing fines is nothing new, but you have said that the situation is now getting worse. What are the reasons for this do you think and what do you see as a long-term solution to these problems and how can others best support this fight?
Yes, these actions to deny our people right to pasture have been ongoing since 1948. But local arrangements were made especially during the President Moi regime to allow controlled grazing of Maasai cattle herds in the Tsavo.
Things changed during the President Kibaki regime and got worse during the Uhuru Kenyatta Presidency. The policy to completely finish off pastoralism as an economic system took hold in the last decade.
The Kenya Wildlife Service and the conservation organizations that work directly in the protected areas like the Sheldrick Trust have more funding from carbon offset financing to execute their nefarious mandates to dispossess and violently evict the Maasai people.
What we want is access to pasture and water for our livestock during difficult times of drought. We can work together to have controlled grazing plans in times of pasture stress like now. The Maasai people play host to huge numbers of wildlife in community controlled areas and we don’t understand why the Kenya Wildlife Service is showing bias towards the Maasai.
Our call to allies and partners across the world is to add their voice and shine light on the ongoing injustices against the Maasai people. The rangelands is home to both the Maasai and the iconic elephants. We must not allow the Kenya Wildlife Service and their eco-fascists backers to poison the savannah.
We call on citizens of the world to fund our legal actions against these rogue agencies and NGOs and our political action to change the laws and policies that govern conservation.
As a pastoralist in Kenya, what are your views on this?
Carbon credit financing and carbon offset projects are opening new war fronts against pastoralists. They basically want us off our lands to execute their nature-based solutions that will allow the global corporations to continue the destruction of the planet. We will resist but first we must survive the current onslaught against the Maasai cattle, our only source of livelihood.
Thank you so much for your time. Hope what you have shared with us will pique the interest of both Africans and Westerners, and encourage more to scratch beneath the surface of the images and narratives of “wild Africa” presented to us by the likes of Attenborough and Goodall, as well as the deceptive rhetoric behind carbon credits and nature-based solutions. Where can readers/listeners hear more from you?
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak and share our lived experiences in the Maasai Rangelands of Africa.
ahh, the USS Liberty, too, imagine that: Fifty-Six Years Ago, June 8, 1967
With a very few exceptions, it’s barely mentioned in the mainstream media whether it’s CNN, MSNBC, FOX news, The New York Times, or the Washington Post. It is never mentioned in public school history books and forget Hollywood, no movie would ever be produced on that tragic day since Zionists conspirators run the movie industry. And of course, the most treasonous people to their own country, the Israeli-controlled US political establishment would never dare mention what happened on June 8th, 1967 when America’s most treasured ally, the ‘Jewish State’ of Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a US Navy technical research ship which was basically a spy ship, killing 34 and injured over 171 crew members including marines, US Naval personal including officers, seamen and even a civilian employee from the National Security Agency (NSA).
The attack on the USS Liberty happened during the height of the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab world that included Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and to an extent Iraq, however, the US had claimed ‘neutral status’ and was in international waters towards the north of the Sinai Peninsula before the war had even started.
Okay okay, moving on, though the murder of USS Navy folk 56 years ago by Jews ties into some of what will unfold here.
Loication: Tijuana
Date: June 4-7.
Assignment: Gastric Sleeve for Friend; there for support, etc.
Result: Completely Surreal and Mind Bending
Long Lasting Effect: Forever Vicarious Trauma
You see, from the last posts on Tijuana, etc., including Little Haiti— City of God — I was on a roll. The juxtaposition of money, transactional Tijuana, the billion dollar medical tourism business gone steroids, the Ugly American EVERYWHERE I turn, and alas, it is ironic that the rednecks and even “smart ones” are coming at critical thinkers like an army of sad and lonely and broken people to get all those “things” taken care of because that Numero Uno Country is a Shit Hole On Every Level.
And, then, I am that magnet for madness!
In Tijuana, the dumb and the dirty thinkers, and where do they get their inside knowledge of Russia, Russian History, Putin, and this “invasion of the poor Ukrainses”?
So, one little clinic, that they call a hospital, is doing 320 of these gastric operations a month. That is by-bass, the band and the sleeve. All sounding innocuous, but in reality getting 70 percent of the stomach cut out with five incisions, sutures, zero food and zero fluids other than clear ones for weeks, and then transitioning into the gastric sleeve diet, well, well, well, fucking extreme and a huge statement of where we are as a species, country, society, and, hell, I could parlay this into a never-ending BLOG.
I know we have an epidemic of obesity and morbid obesity in the USA. Hell, many of the poor and the hard working lower economic class in Mexico are battling with bellies and out of shape bodies.
The food, man, it’s about chilling out, about addiction, about comfort, and all the chemicals now in the air, soil, processed foods, helping with unimaginable weight and fat gain. Stress, overwork, traffic from hell, noise noise noise . . . . Etc.
Now, I know the double-edged sword of ACEs, adverse childhood events (trauma, direct or vicarious). The reality of all those things that can fuck up a child to move him or her toward risky behavior, including food binging, all of that is good research. Unfortunately, the people with the eggheads, the Harvard fucks along with World Economic Forum fucks, all of them in digital finance and pay for success markets, they will be using parental and child activities and proclitivites and outcomes to determine who gets rewarded (i.e. housing, universal income, etc.) and who gets negative reinforcment (punished, no nothing).
New research from the Healthy Nevada Project® found associations between genetics, obesity, and childhood trauma, linking social health determinants, genetics, and disease. The study, which was published this week in Frontiers in Genetics, found that participants with specific genetic traits and who experience childhood traumas are more likely to suffer from adult obesity.
In 2016, DRI and Renown Health launched the Healthy Nevada Project®, the nation’s first community-based, population health study, which now has more than 60,000 participants. The project is a collaboration with personal genomics company, Helix, and combines genetic, environmental, social, and clinical data to address individual and community health needs with the goal of improving health across the state and the nation.
The new study focuses on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which are traumatic and unsafe events that children endure by the age of 18. Over 16,000 participants in the Healthy Nevada Project® answered a mental health survey, and more than 65 percent of these individuals self-reported at least one ACE occurrence. These 16,000 participants were cross-referenced with their genetic makeup, and clinical Body Mass Index (BMI) measures.
According to the research team’s findings, study participants who had experienced one or more types of ACE were 1.5 times more likely to become obese adults. Participants who experienced four or more ACEs were more than twice as likely to become severely obese.
“Understanding that Adverse Childhood Experiences, like abuse, poverty, food insecurity, and poor relationships with primary caregivers increase a person’s risk for obesity but also interact with your genetics — are key to understanding how we might provide earlier interventions, help reduce health disparities, and create a Healthier Nevada for all,” said Tony Slonim, MD, DrPH, President & CEO of Renown Health. Slonim, CEO of Reno, NV-based Renown Health, is the first quadruple-board-certified doctor in the United States with certifications in adult critical care, internal medicine, pediatric critical care, and pediatrics and holds a Doctorate in Public Health.
“Our analysis showed a steady increase in BMI for each ACE a person experienced, which indicates a very strong and significant association between the number of adverse childhood experiences and adult obesity,” said lead author Karen Schlauch, Ph.D., of DRI. “More importantly, participants’ BMI reacted even more strongly to the occurrence of ACEs when paired with certain mutations in several genes, one of which is strongly associated with schizophrenia.” (source)
Note: See how fucking difficult it is to talk about anything straight up without also knowing the nefarious aspect of the world determined by the Elites, Chosen People, the rarified and recklessly smart fuckers who want to tinker with everything in order to make a half a cent every nanosecond from everyone on planet earth.
A red flag for me in Gavin Newsom’s “child-friendly” proposed budget was the $45 million he allocated to screen children and adults in Medi-Cal for ACEs. I’m writing this post to express serious reservations I have about the process of developing ACE (Adverse Early Childhood Experiences) scores for people. ACEs are getting tremendous media exposure of late. While I believe this to be a crucial pubic health concern, my fear is that ACE prevention and mitigation interventions will become vehicles for “innovative” finance and will expand profiling of vulnerable populations.
I want to make it clear from the outset that I acknowledge childhood trauma does result in long-term negative health consequences for individuals. I’ve seen it in my own family. I also recognize that systems of structural racism have inflicted stress and violence on communities of color and indigenous peoples for generations, resulting in high rates of chronic illness that make them attractive targets for “social impact” schemes. People have a basic human right to treatment and care, which should not be conditioned on surveillance and having data harvested to line the pockets of social impact investors.
What concerns me about ACEs is the “scoring.”
Why should a standardized rubric developed under the auspices of one of the largest managed healthcare systems, Kaiser Permanente, label clients and structure the way a doctor, therapist, social worker, or educator can care for them? How did this tool come to have such a far reach, and whose interests will it ultimately serve?
Is a reliance on “scores” an intentionally-constructed framework that allows providers to limit their scope to “fixing” individuals and families rather than advancing a more radical approach whereby systemic causes of community trauma, trauma rooted in our country’s deep racist history, can be acknowledged, holistically assessed, and begin to be ameliorated?
And finally, will this “scoring” system be used to transform the treatment of childhood trauma into a machine for “pay for success” data speculation?
I believe it will.
At issue is that these men and women come to Mexico to try and fight that “disease” of obesity, and they ranged in age, for sure, and in stature, and alas, this is a surreal sight — all these heavy people coming to the fancy hotel to get signed in and to have a host of tests and then the surgery as a last ditch effort to lose huge amounts of BMI each.
Small, trim young Mexican doctors and nurses, and many of the hotel staff, there to assist these people in their effort to surgically have a massively large part of the stomach either cut off or isolated so for the sleeve patients in particular, their stomachs, after healing, will be the size of a small banana, necessitating small and frequent meals (really tied to protein and fruits and vegetables but no starches and white foods, breads, pastas, pizza, fast-food, desserts) and huge daily intake of water.
Some testimonials speak to 100 pounds lost in a year, 60 lbs in six months, 200 libras for some in two years.
All the pain people go through being overweight. All the prejudice. All the leering, and all the bigotry and bias against them. Then add the toll weight takes on the body, deep inside, and skeletal wise.
But medical tourism is also about the cosmetic shit, the lips, chins, noses, the liposuction, the breast jobs, the penile implants, and even operations to add four or five inches to your height.
And, finally, there were people I met getting stem cells, getting bone spurs taken off of spines, getting any number of structural and muscular and endocrine and other body medical interventions.
Why?
Do I have to anwwer that? Hmm, anything to do with ZioAzovNaziLensky?
Well, well, it could have been tied to Saddam, or to all the work to kill Hugo Chavez or murder the entire Vietnamese people, or Koreans, you name it, the reason we go there for dental work and medical work is because the greatest show on earth is bankrupt — no, we are just one large scam and grift and rip-off scheme, 24/7, nanosecond by nanosecond. All that money, trillions, and more, really, since military and empire concentrate their activities by utilizing cradle to grave, all aspects of Casino Capitalism, all departments in government, all avocations and all businesses, all corporations, big and small. We are struggling because we have not carried out both intellectual and armed revolts against these liars, murderers, thieves and rapists in the halls of power.
-hapI’m down here, Baja, Tijuana, talking to people, and that old saw — “You am a magnet for trouble, for the forelorn, for the weirdos and bad guys and fucking posers” — sticks because I tend to want to talk with people, ask questions, and confront ideas.
Hands down, though, the people I met are in one stage or another of lobotomized slap-happy consumers, or victims of some wrung through Stepford Wives/Husbands bootcamp; or they are so traumatized by life’s hard knocks, dog-eat-dog world, the abandonements, the horrific bull-shit jobs and their Boys from Brazil Bosses they almost shit their pants at a snap; or they are so circumcised and spayed in school the bark stupid nothingness; or, so seeped in agnotology; or, so brainwashed and triggered into collective amnesia and Stockhold Syndrome; or, so full of hasbara and hubris; or, so infantilized and Disneyfied; so chemicalized; so battered by pressitution; or, so riddled with untruths, middirection, miseducation and misjudgements — that with one or some of these conditions or processes in mind warping and dumdowning, the magnet I hold attracts some very broken discussions.
oh, well, without GMOs, a third of the world would be starving
what do you think we should have done with that Putin and his Nazi country
well, sure we need to fix the health care, but I think we can do that and support Ukraine
you have to vote for someone this year for president, any time there is a presidential run, you have to vote or if you don’t, then you don’t count: your ideas, your work, your opinion, your worth, your say!
So, the greatest country in the world and these fellows are telling me they have to come to Tijuana for medical treatments because it’s too expensive in Yanqui Land? While they are bad-mouthing Mexico-Mexicans?
One fuck from Arkansas, whose wife came with him for her treatment, who also I heard was hitting up on some of the female spouses of the patients getting the bariatric treatment, after I told him I am a communist and explained what socialism is many times, he goes telling people I argued with him, and that I was a Nazi.
So, he tells me that Governor Nuisance (Newsome) is proposing some reparations for blacks . . . “you know, give ‘em land and money, for the slavery that had nothing to do with them, or me . . . . Hell, and that border shit, that Biden is letting them all in. Well, we have guns in Arkansas and we’ll take care of that.”
So, I ripped him a new asshole, on the street, while he and some other family member of another patient were trying to hitch an Uber or taxi with me and my friends’s Mexican friend from the hospital (after visiting hours) back to the hotel.
Yeah, this marble-mouthed old guy with Duck Dynasty hat, yammering about how “they” all want to come to the USA and take away our jobs, was slack jowled when I told him that that greatest country in the world charges sometimes $30,000 to $85,000 for the sleeve operation whereas this supposed shit hole Tijuana was charing $4600.
I already wrote about the other person on the street waiting for me to get a ride. Somehow she decided to tell me she is Ukrainian, full-blooded, so I got out the Bandera bandana. Just one piece of shit after another — telling me she is a pureblood Ukrainian, and trying to tell me — “show me any socialist country that is actually working” — as she and millions of other capitalist Yankees are the center of the universe and that any other government or systems outside of Capitalism is bad bad bad.
And she’s here from north of Seattle for her son’s stomach realignment. HERE!
Shit, that is one way to end visiting hours.
Yes, some snapshots of some of the goings on in Tijuana during my short walkabout. Amish, readers, down here to get work done.
Canadians are flocking to Mexico in droves, and not just because of its warmer climate.
A new report from Far Homes on Canadian migration to Mexico reflects many Canadians’ frustrations about the cost of living, forcing them to turn to other locales.
According to the Far Homes report, Canadians have been migrating to Mexico more than ever, at about 4x per year since 2020. The real estate website has also broken down why Canadians are leaving all of the country’s major cities. Many are even becoming permanent residents in Mexico.
From Victoria, BC, to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the common denominator for why Canadians are flocking to Mexico is a lower cost of living. (sources)
And Amish are coming to Mexico, as their so-called roots in places like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, are pricing them out of farming:
HARRISBURG, Pa. – – Study finds Amish growing, moving west, scouting land, and has even led parties to scout recently for suitable properties in Alaska and Mexico.
A new study estimates the number of Amish has increased nearly 10 percent in the past two years alone, to a total population of 249,000, compared with about 227,000 in 2008. That figure was just 124,000 in 1992. Nearly all Amish descended from a group of about 5,000 in the early 20th century.
The study by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pa., found that about two-thirds of Amish still live in the traditional strongholds of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, but that they continue to spread west, particularly into the Midwestern corn belt.
Farmland in Lancaster County, Pa., can cost $15,000 an acre, compared with $2,000 or $3,000 per acre elsewhere.
“They are sort of challenging some of the mainstream assumptions about progress and how you achieve the good life and happiness,” said Elizabethtown professor Don Kraybill, the study’s director. “They’re not merely surviving; they’re thriving, and growing at this very rapid rate.”
The highest rates of growth over the past year were recorded in New York (19 percent), Minnesota (9 percent), Missouri (8 percent), Wisconsin (7 percent) and Illinois (7 percent). High-growth areas for Amish in the past five yeand has even led parties to scout recently for suitable properties in Alaska and Mexico.
A new study estimates the number of Amish has increased nearly 10 percent in the past two years alone, to a total population of 249,000, compared with about 227,000 in 2008. That figure was just 124,000 in 1992. Nearly all Amish descended from a group of about 5,000 in the early 20th century.
The study by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pa., found that about two-thirds of Amish still live in the traditional strongholds of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, but that they continue to spread west, particularly into the Midwestern corn belt.
Farmland in Lancaster County, Pa., can cost $15,000 an acre, compared with $2,000 or $3,000 per acre elsewhere.
“They are sort of challenging some of the mainstream assumptions about progress and how you achieve the good life and happiness,” said Elizabethtown professor Don Kraybill, the study’s director. “They’re not merely surviving; they’re thriving, and growing at this very rapid rate.”
The highest rates of growth over the past year were recorded in New York (19 percent), Minnesota (9 percent), Missouri (8 percent), Wisconsin (7 percent) and Illinois (7 percent). High-growth areas for Amish in the past five years.
This, from 1957:
The Mennonites’ only concession to Mexican ways has been to learn Spanish. After their fashion, they are good citizens; e.g., they will not buy licenses for their wagons, instead each month they promptly pay their accumulated fines for driving unlicensed vehicles. But last week, as they were getting ready to plant the oat crop and praying for a good rainy season, the Mennonites knew that their peace with the outer world was at an end.
Promised Lands. The trouble stems from the Mennonites’ prolific growth (girls marry at puberty, bear ten or twelve children). The 15,000 settlers have overrun their original 200,000 acres and an additional 100,000 more bought a few years ago. Alarmed, the Chihuahua government and the Mexican landowners have refused to sell more land. Mexico’s federal government has threatened to renege on Obregón’s pledge, has tried to force the Mennonites to accept the Mexican social-security system and electrification. Reluctantly, the Mennonites decided that it might be time to move. Teams of Mennonite scouts in recent weeks have traveled to British Honduras, where there is much land for sale, and to Ontario, where the Mennonites already own a vast tract. This week the Menrtonite elders were studying the reports. Each promised land has drawbacks: Ontario still has the same restrictions that drove the Mennonites out of Canada 35 years ago, and Honduras offers only a steaming jungle terrain. But the Mennonites may have little choice, are sure that Mexico will scrap the Obregón contract. And if that happens, the precise Chihuahua fields will be sold to more compliant folk, and the Mennonites will become wanderers again. (sources)
Then, flipping the script:
Lancaster’s rolling hills are steeped in the traditions of the Amish — their plain dress and humility as much a tourist lure as their quilts and pies.
Iglesia Catolica San Juan Batista congregation members join in a procession in Lancaster on Good Friday.
But, as an iconic symbol, this Lancaster image could need a revision. Instead of Zerbe’s potato chips, think chicharrones. Egg casserole? How about chilaquiles. Pulled pork? Did someone say lechón asado?
Increasingly, the flavors of this south-central Pennsylvania region — famous for its mud sales and outlets — bears a marked Latin accent that goes beyond language and cuisine.
Latinos have forged a foothold in Lancaster County. In recent years, their population numbers have quietly surpassed that of the Amish.
About 45,000 Latinos live in Lancaster County, according to the 2010 census. The census does not track the Amish or plain communities in Lancaster County. But in 2010, the Elizabethtown College center that studies the Amish estimated about 30,000 living in Lancaster County. (source)
[Photo: Javier Segura and his wife, Celina own El Pueblito, a mexican store and restaurant on Dillerville Road in Lancaster. Their business is doing so well that they plan to expand this year.]
So, lots of people coming from Canada, USA, places like Texas, even Amish country, looking for cosmetic, life-affirming, or medical-necessary interdictions.
Rush rush rush. Constant combi buses, taxis, cars, big black Suburbans, endless cars and motorcycles. Did I say Door Dash? Mexico is being again colonized by the motherfucking capitalists, and Mexicans, unfortunately, are staring at their fucking phones and are eating their imported shit food, soft drinks, vaping, the whole nine fucking yards, yet there are old and small women Indians from Oaxaca selling bracelets, artisan stuff. The US-Mexico borderline is one ugly wall.
It is the wall, no, that is killing the world. In Palestine, everywhere, and now that the ugly Finland is in the fucking NATO, here we go:
[Photo: Police stepped in to prevent anti-immigrant groups and opponents attacking each other during a march in Tampere]
These are the values of coffee-sipping, crap countries, stealing from the rest of the world for their fucking high times lifestyles, but they are now in their own crises of not enough fornication and gestation of their White Race pukes, and they want the others out:
And so, medical tourism in a broke-back country like Mexico, and these Aryan fascists:
So, in Mexico, surgery for veterans, for regular folk, for obese folk, and this is the carnival of our times — endless transactional moments every nanosecond: making money cleaning hotel rooms and on nursing US patients, on all the driving and the tourism outside the medical arena, the construction, the endless new buildings dealing with broke-back mountain USA as USA bombs natural gas pipelines dams in Ukraine, ammonia pipelines, and it just never ends with this Jewish Project on Turtle Island.
And yet and yet, Ukraine and Vegas?
We can’t get our fucking house in order, but trillions for that dirty Ukraine, trillions, man, and endless copy, until we get some racist from Arkansas calling me, a communist, a Nazi, because I surely want Newsome out but reparations in, I want an end the fucking over-policing, yes, it is for me, ACAB, and for sure, end the MIC, letting them rot, those civilian clotheed and uniformed sicarios and the limp-wristed ones with joy sticks and drones. These are the new new Orwellian times, for sure. An anti-racist, a revolutionary who wants both parties drawn and quartered, who wants the billionaires to walk the plank, who wants the 39 million millionaires thrown in re-education programs, who wants an end to Koch, Blackrock, Exxon, Raytheon, all of it, until a fucking communist is called a Nazi.
Yeah, may they all go the way of the Dodo:
750 U.S. Military Bases Globally, $7.2 Trillion US Nuclear Weapons Expenditure Since Hiroshima, Nagasaki:
In Europe, some of the US military facilities currently in operation date to the Cold War era. Much has changed over the past generation, as many European states have joined the Washington-dominated NATO, an increasingly aggressive military association. NATO enlargement of course continues, despite the fact that membership leads inevitably to significant erosion of sovereignty and independence, especially for the smaller countries which have chosen to join NATO.
Since 2004 NATO-operated spy planes (Airborne Warning and Control System) have been patrolling the Baltic Sea nations and NATO states such as Estonia and Latvia, at the actual borders of Russia, a nuclear superpower. Such actions by NATO as these have resulted in a clear potential for nuclear war erupting, a threat which is increasing as tensions escalate in the Ukraine crisis.
From 1940 to 1996, Washington spent about $5.5 trillion on its nuclear program. This figure does not include the $320 billion, pertaining to the annual storage and removal costs of more than 50 years worth of accumulated radioactive waste, and the $20 billion needed for the dismantling of nuclear weapons systems and removal of surplus nuclear material.
A study by the Brooking Institution in Washington calculated that, from the World War II years until 2007, US governments spent in total $7.2 trillion on nuclear weapons. Washington’s overall military expenditure in the same 6 decade period, taking into account conventional weaponry, amounted to $22.8 trillion. Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America has produced around 70,000 nuclear weapons. When the Cold War was said to have officially ended in 1991, Washington had an arsenal that year of 23,000 nuclear warheads.
If you love this fucking piece of shit country, then you need to go the way of the Dodo. This has never been a country, a nation, really, just a dirty thieving, blood-letting, land stealing, land-polluting, prostitution ring of galatic proportions, where it all is transactional, where every treaty with Native Tribes has been broken, where the perverse is heralded as heroic, and where heroes are turned to dust or locked up.
Until we have these phallic crunching Jews and Catholics and Wacko Others, following the way of the neo-Torah, neo-Talmud, where every sweat gland will soon be tracked, mapped, and regulated and fined and monetized by the Golems of the Chosen People: Take your poison anyway you might:
A golem is a creature formed out of a lifeless substance such as dust or earth that is brought to life by ritual incantations and sequences of Hebrew letters. The golem, brought into being by a human creator, becomes a helper, a companion, or a rescuer of an imperiled Jewish community.
A helper for Jews to do what, hmm? From sea to shining sea, looking for marks, for those to exploit, those to bring to their knees, bloodied, hoping for a crumb from the pita and flick of the hummus?
Yeah, no?
So what comes next as the featured act post Wendy Sherman? It should be noted that the State Department top level is completely staffed by Jewish Americans who are politically-speaking neocons with close ties to Israel who also believe that the maintenance of total military dominance by the United State is good both for them and good for the Jewish state. All of them are Russo-phobes for various reasons often related to the history of Jews in Russia. Sherman recently participated in discussions in Washington with her Israeli counterpart intended to “…further deepen and expand the US-Israel relationship.” Someone should tell her that it is already far deeper than it should be if one were to go by American interests.
There are a lot of anonymous bureaucrats that man the offices in the nation’s capital. If one were to mention the name Wendy Sherman at a Washington DC cocktail gathering it is likely that few in the room will have ever heard of her, but she has long been one of the most important players in Democratic Party administrations when it comes to foreign policy in key parts of the world. Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State, will be retiring this summer after more than thirty years with the Foreign Service. She has been a fixture in often controversial top level policy making since Bill Clinton was in the White House, where she served as a top adviser to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, also taking on the role of lead negotiator in the ultimately unsuccessful talks to stop North Korea’s ballistic missile program in the late 1990s. With a return to power of the Democrats in 2008, she served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Obama. To her credit, she was a lead negotiator with Iran on the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA), which Donald Trump acting on bad advice subsequently withdrew from. (“Is a Change of Course at State Department Coming? Some senior officers are retiring but who and what will replace them?” By Philip Giraldi)
Now, search Google or Wiki or just generally look for stuff on Giraldi, and the Nazi Jewish Marching Armies of Propaganda and you will find Philip down as this or that sort of anti-semite, this or that conspiracy theorists, this or that, well, critical thinker. And so it goes, man, so it goes.
And yet, these dirty Zelensky Family Member, all the Vogue shoots and all the lies, the Pandora Papers, all the money money money, all the superficial and mean rich thinking, all of it, the Goyim, the Arkansas fucker, take it up the rear, until he/they calls/call me, a communist, a Nazi. Ahh, Very Interesting, but Stupid.
[Hogan’s Heroes, produced by, well, here: Albert S. Ruddy was born to Ruth (née Ruddy) Hertz and Hy Stotland,] a Jewish family in Montreal, and raised in New York City and in Miami Beach, Florida, by his mother. Ruddy attended Brooklyn Technical High School before earning a scholarship to allow him to study chemical engineering at City College of New York. In 1956, he graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in architectural design.
the Nazi regime run by the USA Nazi’s and of course, the Hasbara Apartheid Israel Firsters are Running the Racist Anti-Russia/Russian/China/Chinese Merchants of Death Casino Capitalist Scam
The Dirty ZioAzovNaziLensky and his A-Team of Hummus Folk bomb a dam, and they of course, have the coordinates and telemetry from Uncle Rabbi Sam, and here we are:
The Disgusting Biden and Team, pushing for nuclear missiles on F-16’s, and all is well in AmeriKKKA.
The spike in air pollution comes from wildfires that have been raging in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia. `
“A band of smoke from wildfires in Quebec will continue to linger across east central and southeast Minnesota today due to very light winds,” the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency tweeted Monday, adding that air quality should improve in the evening as thunderstorms help disperse smoke particles from the air.
Some 414 fires were burning in Canada as of Tuesday evening including 239 considered “out of control,” according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. The country is experiencing one of the worst starts to its wildfire season ever recorded. More than 6.7 million acres in the country have already burned in 2023, federal officials said last week.
Breaking Bad and Breakback Mountain:
Half a million gallons of sewage leaks into Oregon river after facility malfunction
Residents of Portland, Oregon, have been advised to avoid one of the nation’s largest rivers after roughly half a million gallons of sewage leaked into the water system, local officials said Monday afternoon. The reason for the advisory, officials said, is because there could be “increased bacteria” in the water.
The issue is in the Willamette River, which according to nonprofit organization Willamette Riverkeeper is the 13th largest river by volume in the U.S. The river is also home to the nation’s second-largest waterfall by volume and flows through some of the state’s biggest cities, including Portland, Eugene and Salem.
So this scum gets how much for his villa in Italy, Crimea, Florida, Switzerland, UK, wherever?
While this dirty country supports men athletes competing against women and then supports censorship?
“After that meeting, they really scared us. It was scary, and I was petrified,” Scanlan said. “I went home that night and I called my brother and said, ‘Can I even talk about this with you? Is there something wrong with me for thinking that this is wrong?’”
“It worked. The university wanted us to be quiet, and they did it in a very effective way. They continued to tell us that our opinions were wrong and that if we had an issue with it, we were the problem. And it’s frightening, and your future job is on the line.”
“And after that point, no one would talk about it anymore,” Scanlan continued. “They effectively silenced us even within talking to each other.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the University of Pennsylvania for comment and had not heard back as of publication.
Sick?
University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia/Liam Thomas, left, and Kentucky’s Riley Gaines tied for 5th in the 200 freestyle finals during the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on March 18, 2022, at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Ahh, the dirty dirty shit of ZioAzovNaziLensky.
THis fucked up Zionist and his team of Jewish freaks?
So, here I am, in Tijuana, and these Americanos are here for Botox, breasts, Stem cell work, gastric surgery, so much more, and teeth as well.
I ran into veternas from USA, and pro-athlete, and alas, they are HERE, in Tijuana who can’t get medical treatment in USA.
Imagine that, USA, and we throw trillions to Ukraine. That Ukraine.
There are two Volodymyr Zelenskys: the one we have known since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, who has since been celebrated every day in the Western media as a hero with a spotless white (or green) vest; the other, who was less well-known prior to this significant escalation of the war, which, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, began in 2014. (Here are details on the actual start of this war in 2014).
After all, prominent British, German and other European media already referred to the “Panama” or ”Pandora Papers” to describe the “former” Zelensky, who was not yet the illustrious governor of the American empire, as being highly corrupt. His hero status may abruptly end though, if and when Washington decides that he is no longer useful (e.g., when war results do not meet expectations despite massive NATO support and involvement) and the media start digging for dirt on him again. Wanna bet?
What the same media bubble fails to mention, however, is that Zelensky was elected to office with a large majority of the votes, with massive financial support from the richest Ukrainian oligarch at the time (who had stolen huge sums of money and was therefore banned from entering the United States) and with the promise of bringing peace to the Donbas. It may surprise you—but he actually tried.
Cocain, theft, Jewish Aryan Mentality, etc. May he go the way of the dodo.
These AMeriKKKans are amazing. I ran into some winners, really. Medical Tourism, uh? White folk here for gastric surgery for obesity, and others for other medical reasons. I had to push away a shared Uber ride with an Arkansas and Seattle winner talking shit about “Newsom is trying to give blacks reparations,” and then the white woman says she has not idea where socialism works, and alas, we argued, and I know how to argue, but no use putting it here.
Simple shit, no, that all socialist movements have been attacked by USA, by UK, and there you have it — no socialist experiment can get anywhere, i.e. Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China, shit, the end of this movement is part of the ugly fake democracy shit of Amerikkka.
Then, this lady tells me she is pure Ukrainian, blood pure, and that was it for me. Fuck dirty Blinken, Fuck Nuland, Fuck them all:
Here is one of Alina Lipp’s uncensored documentaries about her stay in Donbas. Watch and form your own opinion!
For those for whom atrocities like the murder of Russian-speaking Ukrainians by Ukrainian nationalists don’t turn their stomachs, I recommend this video.
And discover even more about the history of the war and its background in Ukraine in this insightful documentary by Paul Moreira, a renowned French filmmaker who has made quite a few investigative documentaries in conflict zones.
Nationalists and U.S. government prevented agreement
Although Zelensky was reluctant to accept the Minsk agreements on resolving the minority issue, he continued talks on their implementation. The radical nationalists expressed their violent opposition at every opportunity—including in August 2021, when at least eight police officers were injured during armed protests in front of the presidential office. Their threats against Zelensky undoubtedly thwarted a peace agreement that could have prevented the Russian invasion.
Fuck this Aryan lady in Tijuana from Seattle:
Not surprisingly, the French-Israeli lawyer and anti-Semitism activist Arno Klarsfeld strongly opposes Ukraine’s accession to the European Union:
“Thirty years ago, Stepan Bandera, who called for the murder of Jews, was considered in Ukraine as a murderer, while today he is erected as a national hero,” the lawyer said about the Russophobic Ukrainian Nazi. “The country has issued postage stamps [with] his image, erected statues and established holidays in his honor. The largest avenue in Kiev, five kilometers long and leading to the site of Babi Yar, bears his name. As for the extension of this avenue, it was named after Roman-Taras Yosypovych Shukhevych, who was even worse than Bandera.”
Shukhevych, a Nazi and mass murderer of Jews and Poles, has become another outstanding national hero in today’s Ukraine.
While numerous monuments to Nazi criminals are being erected, at the same time monuments honoring greats of world literature, such as Leo Tolstoy and Alexander Pushkin, are being torn down along with monuments honoring Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. The European Union and the United States have provided most of the funding for this demolition and renaming frenzy.
Roman Shukhevych: photo.
Ukrainian nationalists bring down Lenin statue in Kharkiv in 2014: photo.
This fucking Nazi Jew:
The Ukrainian commander-in-chief with a “Totenkopf” (skull) badge. Around the time the General Vatutin monument in Kyiv was destroyed, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Tenth Mountain Infantry Brigade received the nickname Edelweiss. (source)
Says so much about the dead USA:
Medical tourism takes people all over the world, including to Mexico, India and Eastern Europe. Violence against medical tourists is generally thought to be rare, but the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns about other risks such as quality of care, infection control and communication challenges with medical staff.
“It’s on the daily, without a doubt. There are people going daily to get this kind of stuff done,” said Dr. Nolan Perez, a gastroenterologist in Brownsville, Texas, which is across the border from Matamoros. “Whether it’s primary care provider visits or dental procedures or something more significant, like elective or weight loss surgery, there’s no doubt that people are doing that because of low cost and easier access.”
So, very discordant, no, here for a friend’s medical procedure, and then some old lady telling me she is pure Ukrainian blood.
Fucking surreal:
In the five years since Los Angeles County commissioned one of many reports into the RV problemand potential solutions, the number of RVs on county streets has risen by more than 50% – from more than 4,500 in 2018 to more than 7,100 at last count. Reports are regularly requested and written by various city and county departments.
“I’m tired of studies and reports,” Park told CNN recently at her freshly painted City Hall office. She was elected last year on a platform dripping with intent to handle the various homelessness issues plaguing Los Angeles. Among her first targets: people she calls “vanlords,” some of whom, she says, rent out rotting, unsafe RVs. “There is a thriving trade in RVs being rented out as dwelling units on the internet,” Park said.
Park proposed a motion that would explicitly add RVs to part of the city code that, “Prohibits a person or entity from reserving any street, parking space, or other public space without written authorization from the City while conducting business pertaining to new and used vehicles.” The motion would also force RV owners to comply with a state law, “which requires that any RV offered for sale, sold, rented or leased within California meet the design safety standards of the American National Standards Institute and Fire Protection Association.” (source)
Dead on Arrival while Dirty ZioAzovNaziLensky gets it all! Source.
And here we are now, this dirty Ukraine:
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Federation Council members, State Duma deputies, good afternoon. Representatives of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol are here among us, citizens of Russia, residents of Crimea and Sevastopol!
Dear friends, we have gathered here today in connection with an issue that is of vital, historic significance to all of us. A referendum was held in Crimea on March 16 in full compliance with democratic procedures and international norms.
More than 82 percent of the electorate took part in the vote. Over 96 percent of them spoke out in favour of reuniting with Russia. These numbers speak for themselves.
To understand the reason behind such a choice it is enough to know the history of Crimea and what Russia and Crimea have always meant for each other.
Everything in Crimea speaks of our shared history and pride. This is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptised. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilisation and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The graves of Russian soldiers whose bravery brought Crimea into the Russian empire are also in Crimea. This is also Sevastopol – a legendary city with an outstanding history, a fortress that serves as the birthplace of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Crimea is Balaklava and Kerch, Malakhov Kurgan and Sapun Ridge. Each one of these places is dear to our hearts, symbolising Russian military glory and outstanding valour.
Crimea is a unique blend of different peoples’ cultures and traditions. This makes it similar to Russia as a whole, where not a single ethnic group has been lost over the centuries. Russians and Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and people of other ethnic groups have lived side by side in Crimea, retaining their own identity, traditions, languages and faith.
Incidentally, the total population of the Crimean Peninsula today is 2.2 million people, of whom almost 1.5 million are Russians, 350,000 are Ukrainians who predominantly consider Russian their native language, and about 290,000–300,000 are Crimean Tatars, who, as the referendum has shown, also lean towards Russia.
True, there was a time when Crimean Tatars were treated unfairly, just as a number of other peoples in the USSR. There is only one thing I can say here: millions of people of various ethnicities suffered during those repressions, and primarily Russians.
Crimean Tatars returned to their homeland. I believe we should make all the necessary political and legislative decisions to finalise the rehabilitation of Crimean Tatars, restore them in their rights and clear their good name.
We have great respect for people of all the ethnic groups living in Crimea. This is their common home, their motherland, and it would be right – I know the local population supports this – for Crimea to have three equal national languages: Russian, Ukrainian and Tatar.
Colleagues,
In people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia. This firm conviction is based on truth and justice and was passed from generation to generation, over time, under any circumstances, despite all the dramatic changes our country went through during the entire 20th century.
After the revolution, the Bolsheviks, for a number of reasons – may God judge them – added large sections of the historical South of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic make-up of the population, and today these areas form the southeast of Ukraine. Then, in 1954, a decision was made to transfer Crimean Region to Ukraine, along with Sevastopol, despite the fact that it was a federal city. This was the personal initiative of the Communist Party head Nikita Khrushchev. What stood behind this decision of his – a desire to win the support of the Ukrainian political establishment or to atone for the mass repressions of the 1930’s in Ukraine – is for historians to figure out.
What matters now is that this decision was made in clear violation of the constitutional norms that were in place even then. The decision was made behind the scenes. Naturally, in a totalitarian state nobody bothered to ask the citizens of Crimea and Sevastopol. They were faced with the fact. People, of course, wondered why all of a sudden Crimea became part of Ukraine. But on the whole – and we must state this clearly, we all know it – this decision was treated as a formality of sorts because the territory was transferred within the boundaries of a single state. Back then, it was impossible to imagine that Ukraine and Russia may split up and become two separate states. However, this has happened.
Unfortunately, what seemed impossible became a reality. The USSR fell apart. Things developed so swiftly that few people realised how truly dramatic those events and their consequences would be. Many people both in Russia and in Ukraine, as well as in other republics hoped that the Commonwealth of Independent States that was created at the time would become the new common form of statehood. They were told that there would be a single currency, a single economic space, joint armed forces; however, all this remained empty promises, while the big country was gone. It was only when Crimea ended up as part of a different country that Russia realised that it was not simply robbed, it was plundered.
At the same time, we have to admit that by launching the sovereignty parade Russia itself aided in the collapse of the Soviet Union. And as this collapse was legalised, everyone forgot about Crimea and Sevastopol – the main base of the Black Sea Fleet. Millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones, overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.
Now, many years later, I heard residents of Crimea say that back in 1991 they were handed over like a sack of potatoes. This is hard to disagree with. And what about the Russian state? What about Russia? It humbly accepted the situation. This country was going through such hard times then that realistically it was incapable of protecting its interests. However, the people could not reconcile themselves to this outrageous historical injustice. All these years, citizens and many public figures came back to this issue, saying that Crimea is historically Russian land and Sevastopol is a Russian city. Yes, we all knew this in our hearts and minds, but we had to proceed from the existing reality and build our good-neighbourly relations with independent Ukraine on a new basis. Meanwhile, our relations with Ukraine, with the fraternal Ukrainian people have always been and will remain of foremost importance for us.
Today we can speak about it openly, and I would like to share with you some details of the negotiations that took place in the early 2000s. The then President of Ukraine Mr Kuchma asked me to expedite the process of delimiting the Russian-Ukrainian border. At that time, the process was practically at a standstill. Russia seemed to have recognised Crimea as part of Ukraine, but there were no negotiations on delimiting the borders. Despite the complexity of the situation, I immediately issued instructions to Russian government agencies to speed up their work to document the borders, so that everyone had a clear understanding that by agreeing to delimit the border we admitted de facto and de jure that Crimea was Ukrainian territory, thereby closing the issue.
We accommodated Ukraine not only regarding Crimea, but also on such a complicated matter as the maritime boundary in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait. What we proceeded from back then was that good relations with Ukraine matter most for us and they should not fall hostage to deadlock territorial disputes. However, we expected Ukraine to remain our good neighbour, we hoped that Russian citizens and Russian speakers in Ukraine, especially its southeast and Crimea, would live in a friendly, democratic and civilised state that would protect their rights in line with the norms of international law.
However, this is not how the situation developed. Time and time again attempts were made to deprive Russians of their historical memory, even of their language and to subject them to forced assimilation. Moreover, Russians, just as other citizens of Ukraine are suffering from the constant political and state crisis that has been rocking the country for over 20 years.
I understand why Ukrainian people wanted change. They have had enough of the authorities in power during the years of Ukraine’s independence. Presidents, prime ministers and parliamentarians changed, but their attitude to the country and its people remained the same. They milked the country, fought among themselves for power, assets and cash flows and did not care much about the ordinary people. They did not wonder why it was that millions of Ukrainian citizens saw no prospects at home and went to other countries to work as day labourers. I would like to stress this: it was not some Silicon Valley they fled to, but to become day labourers. Last year alone almost 3 million people found such jobs in Russia. According to some sources, in 2013 their earnings in Russia totalled over $20 billion, which is about 12% of Ukraine’s GDP.
I would like to reiterate that I understand those who came out on Maidan with peaceful slogans against corruption, inefficient state management and poverty. The right to peaceful protest, democratic procedures and elections exist for the sole purpose of replacing the authorities that do not satisfy the people. However, those who stood behind the latest events in Ukraine had a different agenda: they were preparing yet another government takeover; they wanted to seize power and would stop short of nothing. They resorted to terror, murder and riots. Nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites executed this coup. They continue to set the tone in Ukraine to this day.
The new so-called authorities began by introducing a draft law to revise the language policy, which was a direct infringement on the rights of ethnic minorities. However, they were immediately ‘disciplined’ by the foreign sponsors of these so-called politicians. One has to admit that the mentors of these current authorities are smart and know well what such attempts to build a purely Ukrainian state may lead to. The draft law was set aside, but clearly reserved for the future. Hardly any mention is made of this attempt now, probably on the presumption that people have a short memory. Nevertheless, we can all clearly see the intentions of these ideological heirs of Bandera, Hitler’s accomplice during World War II.
It is also obvious that there is no legitimate executive authority in Ukraine now, nobody to talk to. Many government agencies have been taken over by the impostors, but they do not have any control in the country, while they themselves – and I would like to stress this – are often controlled by radicals. In some cases, you need a special permit from the militants on Maidan to meet with certain ministers of the current government. This is not a joke – this is reality.
Those who opposed the coup were immediately threatened with repression. Naturally, the first in line here was Crimea, the Russian-speaking Crimea. In view of this, the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol turned to Russia for help in defending their rights and lives, in preventing the events that were unfolding and are still underway in Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkov and other Ukrainian cities.
Naturally, we could not leave this plea unheeded; we could not abandon Crimea and its residents in distress. This would have been betrayal on our part.
First, we had to help create conditions so that the residents of Crimea for the first time in history were able to peacefully express their free will regarding their own future. However, what do we hear from our colleagues in Western Europe and North America? They say we are violating norms of international law. Firstly, it’s a good thing that they at least remember that there exists such a thing as international law – better late than never.
Secondly, and most importantly – what exactly are we violating? True, the President of the Russian Federation received permission from the Upper House of Parliament to use the Armed Forces in Ukraine. However, strictly speaking, nobody has acted on this permission yet. Russia’s Armed Forces never entered Crimea; they were there already in line with an international agreement. True, we did enhance our forces there; however – this is something I would like everyone to hear and know – we did not exceed the personnel limit of our Armed Forces in Crimea, which is set at 25,000, because there was no need to do so.
Next. As it declared independence and decided to hold a referendum, the Supreme Council of Crimea referred to the United Nations Charter, which speaks of the right of nations to self-determination. Incidentally, I would like to remind you that when Ukraine seceded from the USSR it did exactly the same thing, almost word for word. Ukraine used this right, yet the residents of Crimea are denied it. Why is that?
Moreover, the Crimean authorities referred to the well-known Kosovo precedent – a precedent our western colleagues created with their own hands in a very similar situation, when they agreed that the unilateral separation of Kosovo from Serbia, exactly what Crimea is doing now, was legitimate and did not require any permission from the country’s central authorities. Pursuant to Article 2, Chapter 1 of the United Nations Charter, the UN International Court agreed with this approach and made the following comment in its ruling of July 22, 2010, and I quote: “No general prohibition may be inferred from the practice of the Security Council with regard to declarations of independence,” and “General international law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence.” Crystal clear, as they say.
I do not like to resort to quotes, but in this case, I cannot help it. Here is a quote from another official document: the Written Statement of the United States America of April 17, 2009, submitted to the same UN International Court in connection with the hearings on Kosovo. Again, I quote: “Declarations of independence may, and often do, violate domestic legislation. However, this does not make them violations of international law.” End of quote. They wrote this, disseminated it all over the world, had everyone agree and now they are outraged. Over what? The actions of Crimean people completely fit in with these instructions, as it were. For some reason, things that Kosovo Albanians (and we have full respect for them) were permitted to do, Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in Crimea are not allowed. Again, one wonders why.
We keep hearing from the United States and Western Europe that Kosovo is some special case. What makes it so special in the eyes of our colleagues? It turns out that it is the fact that the conflict in Kosovo resulted in so many human casualties. Is this a legal argument? The ruling of the International Court says nothing about this. This is not even double standards; this is amazing, primitive, blunt cynicism. One should not try so crudely to make everything suit their interests, calling the same thing white today and black tomorrow. According to this logic, we have to make sure every conflict leads to human losses.
I will state clearly — if the Crimean local self-defence units had not taken the situation under control, there could have been casualties as well. Fortunately this did not happen. There was not a single armed confrontation in Crimea and no casualties. Why do you think this was so? The answer is simple: because it is very difficult, practically impossible to fight against the will of the people. Here I would like to thank the Ukrainian military – and this is 22,000 fully armed servicemen. I would like to thank those Ukrainian service members who refrained from bloodshed and did not smear their uniforms in blood.
Other thoughts come to mind in this connection. They keep talking of some Russian intervention in Crimea, some sort of aggression. This is strange to hear. I cannot recall a single case in history of an intervention without a single shot being fired and with no human casualties.
Colleagues,
Like a mirror, the situation in Ukraine reflects what is going on and what has been happening in the world over the past several decades. After the dissolution of bipolarity on the planet, we no longer have stability. Key international institutions are not getting any stronger; on the contrary, in many cases, they are sadly degrading. Our western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right. They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle “If you are not with us, you are against us.” To make this aggression look legitimate, they force the necessary resolutions from international organisations, and if for some reason this does not work, they simply ignore the UN Security Council and the UN overall.
This happened in Yugoslavia; we remember 1999 very well. It was hard to believe, even seeing it with my own eyes, that at the end of the 20th century, one of Europe’s capitals, Belgrade, was under missile attack for several weeks, and then came the real intervention. Was there a UN Security Council resolution on this matter, allowing for these actions? Nothing of the sort. And then, they hit Afghanistan, Iraq, and frankly violated the UN Security Council resolution on Libya, when instead of imposing the so-called no-fly zone over it they started bombing it too.
There was a whole series of controlled “colour” revolutions. Clearly, the people in those nations, where these events took place, were sick of tyranny and poverty, of their lack of prospects; but these feelings were taken advantage of cynically. Standards were imposed on these nations that did not in any way correspond to their way of life, traditions, or these peoples’ cultures. As a result, instead of democracy and freedom, there was chaos, outbreaks in violence and a series of upheavals. The Arab Spring turned into the Arab Winter.
A similar situation unfolded in Ukraine. In 2004, to push the necessary candidate through at the presidential elections, they thought up some sort of third round that was not stipulated by the law. It was absurd and a mockery of the constitution. And now, they have thrown in an organised and well-equipped army of militants.
We understand what is happening; we understand that these actions were aimed against Ukraine and Russia and against Eurasian integration. And all this while Russia strived to engage in dialogue with our colleagues in the West. We are constantly proposing cooperation on all key issues; we want to strengthen our level of trust and for our relations to be equal, open and fair. But we saw no reciprocal steps.
On the contrary, they have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed us before an accomplished fact. This happened with NATO’s expansion to the East, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They kept telling us the same thing: “Well, this does not concern you.” That’s easy to say.
It happened with the deployment of a missile defence system. In spite of all our apprehensions, the project is working and moving forward. It happened with the endless foot-dragging in the talks on visa issues, promises of fair competition and free access to global markets.
Today, we are being threatened with sanctions, but we already experience many limitations, ones that are quite significant for us, our economy and our nation. For example, still during the times of the Cold War, the US and subsequently other nations restricted a large list of technologies and equipment from being sold to the USSR, creating the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls list. Today, they have formally been eliminated, but only formally; and in reality, many limitations are still in effect.
In short, we have every reason to assume that the infamous policy of containment, led in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today. They are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner because we have an independent position, because we maintain it and because we call things like they are and do not engage in hypocrisy. But there is a limit to everything. And with Ukraine, our western partners have crossed the line, playing the bear and acting irresponsibly and unprofessionally.
After all, they were fully aware that there are millions of Russians living in Ukraine and in Crimea. They must have really lacked political instinct and common sense not to foresee all the consequences of their actions. Russia found itself in a position it could not retreat from. If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard. You must always remember this.
Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria, to refute the rhetoric of the cold war and to accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs; like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.
At the same time, we are grateful to all those who understood our actions in Crimea; we are grateful to the people of China, whose leaders have always considered the situation in Ukraine and Crimea taking into account the full historical and political context, and greatly appreciate India’s reserve and objectivity.
Today, I would like to address the people of the United States of America, the people who, since the foundation of their nation and adoption of the Declaration of Independence, have been proud to hold freedom above all else. Isn’t the desire of Crimea’s residents to freely choose their fate such a value? Please understand us.
I believe that the Europeans, first and foremost, the Germans, will also understand me. Let me remind you that in the course of political consultations on the unification of East and West Germany, at the expert, though very high level, some nations that were then and are now Germany’s allies did not support the idea of unification. Our nation, however, unequivocally supported the sincere, unstoppable desire of the Germans for national unity. I am confident that you have not forgotten this, and I expect that the citizens of Germany will also support the aspiration of the Russians, of historical Russia, to restore unity.
I also want to address the people of Ukraine. I sincerely want you to understand us: we do not want to harm you in any way, or to hurt your national feelings. We have always respected the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian state, incidentally, unlike those who sacrificed Ukraine’s unity for their political ambitions. They flaunt slogans about Ukraine’s greatness, but they are the ones who did everything to divide the nation. Today’s civil standoff is entirely on their conscience. I want you to hear me, my dear friends. Do not believe those who want you to fear Russia, shouting that other regions will follow Crimea. We do not want to divide Ukraine; we do not need that. As for Crimea, it was and remains a Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean-Tatar land.
I repeat, just as it has been for centuries, it will be a home to all the peoples living there. What it will never be and do is follow in Bandera’s footsteps!
Crimea is our common historical legacy and a very important factor in regional stability. And this strategic territory should be part of a strong and stable sovereignty, which today can only be Russian. Otherwise, dear friends (I am addressing both Ukraine and Russia), you and we – the Russians and the Ukrainians – could lose Crimea completely, and that could happen in the near historical perspective. Please think about it.
Let me note too that we have already heard declarations from Kiev about Ukraine soon joining NATO. What would this have meant for Crimea and Sevastopol in the future? It would have meant that NATO’s navy would be right there in this city of Russia’s military glory, and this would create not an illusory but a perfectly real threat to the whole of southern Russia. These are things that could have become reality were it not for the choice the Crimean people made, and I want to say thank you to them for this.
But let me say too that we are not opposed to cooperation with NATO, for this is certainly not the case. For all the internal processes within the organisation, NATO remains a military alliance, and we are against having a military alliance making itself at home right in our backyard or in our historic territory. I simply cannot imagine that we would travel to Sevastopol to visit NATO sailors. Of course, most of them are wonderful guys, but it would be better to have them come and visit us, be our guests, rather than the other way round.
Let me say quite frankly that it pains our hearts to see what is happening in Ukraine at the moment, see the people’s suffering and their uncertainty about how to get through today and what awaits them tomorrow. Our concerns are understandable because we are not simply close neighbours but, as I have said many times already, we are one people. Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus is our common source and we cannot live without each other.
Let me say one other thing too. Millions of Russians and Russian-speaking people live in Ukraine and will continue to do so. Russia will always defend their interests using political, diplomatic and legal means. But it should be above all in Ukraine’s own interest to ensure that these people’s rights and interests are fully protected. This is the guarantee of Ukraine’s state stability and territorial integrity.
We want to be friends with Ukraine and we want Ukraine to be a strong, sovereign and self-sufficient country. Ukraine is one of our biggest partners after all. We have many joint projects and I believe in their success no matter what the current difficulties. Most importantly, we want peace and harmony to reign in Ukraine, and we are ready to work together with other countries to do everything possible to facilitate and support this. But as I said, only Ukraine’s own people can put their own house in order.
Residents of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, the whole of Russia admired your courage, dignity and bravery. It was you who decided Crimea’s future. We were closer than ever over these days, supporting each other. These were sincere feelings of solidarity. It is at historic turning points such as these that a nation demonstrates its maturity and strength of spirit. The Russian people showed this maturity and strength through their united support for their compatriots.
Russia’s foreign policy position on this matter drew its firmness from the will of millions of our people, our national unity and the support of our country’s main political and public forces. I want to thank everyone for this patriotic spirit, everyone without exception. Now, we need to continue and maintain this kind of consolidation so as to resolve the tasks our country faces on its road ahead.
Obviously, we will encounter external opposition, but this is a decision that we need to make for ourselves. Are we ready to consistently defend our national interests, or will we forever give in, retreat to who knows where? Some Western politicians are already threatening us with not just sanctions but also the prospect of increasingly serious problems on the domestic front. I would like to know what it is they have in mind exactly: action by a fifth column, this disparate bunch of ‘national traitors’, or are they hoping to put us in a worsening social and economic situation so as to provoke public discontent? We consider such statements irresponsible and clearly aggressive in tone, and we will respond to them accordingly. At the same time, we will never seek confrontation with our partners, whether in the East or the West, but on the contrary, will do everything we can to build civilised and good-neighbourly relations as one is supposed to in the modern world.
Colleagues,
I understand the people of Crimea, who put the question in the clearest possible terms in the referendum: should Crimea be with Ukraine or with Russia? We can be sure in saying that the authorities in Crimea and Sevastopol, the legislative authorities, when they formulated the question, set aside group and political interests and made the people’s fundamental interests alone the cornerstone of their work. The particular historic, population, political and economic circumstances of Crimea would have made any other proposed option — however tempting it could be at the first glance — only temporary and fragile and would have inevitably led to further worsening of the situation there, which would have had disastrous effects on people’s lives. The people of Crimea thus decided to put the question in firm and uncompromising form, with no grey areas. The referendum was fair and transparent, and the people of Crimea clearly and convincingly expressed their will and stated that they want to be with Russia.
Russia will also have to make a difficult decision now, taking into account the various domestic and external considerations. What do people here in Russia think? Here, like in any democratic country, people have different points of view, but I want to make the point that the absolute majority of our people clearly do support what is happening.
The most recent public opinion surveys conducted here in Russia show that 95 percent of people think that Russia should protect the interests of Russians and members of other ethnic groups living in Crimea – 95 percent of our citizens. More than 83 percent think that Russia should do this even if it will complicate our relations with some other countries. A total of 86 percent of our people see Crimea as still being Russian territory and part of our country’s lands. And one particularly important figure, which corresponds exactly with the result in Crimea’s referendum: almost 92 percent of our people support Crimea’s reunification with Russia.
Thus we see that the overwhelming majority of people in Crimea and the absolute majority of the Russian Federation’s people support the reunification of the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol with Russia.
Now this is a matter for Russia’s own political decision, and any decision here can be based only on the people’s will, because the people is the ultimate source of all authority.
Members of the Federation Council, deputies of the State Duma, citizens of Russia, residents of Crimea and Sevastopol, today, in accordance with the people’s will, I submit to the Federal Assembly a request to consider a Constitutional Law on the creation of two new constituent entities within the Russian Federation: the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, and to ratify the treaty on admitting to the Russian Federation Crimea and Sevastopol, which is already ready for signing. I stand assured of your support.
a calvacade of people witnesses after a few hours in Tijuana says it all about the death of us, the dirty dealings of capitalists, and the struggle, man, la lucha, Little Haiti!
I met Mari, from Haiti, selling oranges on the street, near the central plaza, downtown, Tijuana. I had just left the big church, with the Virgin of Guadalupe in tile way above the double doors.
Haiti and Mexico. Haiti and fleeing a country toppled by Clintons Types, the French, a few hundred years of hell, a slave rebellion, debts, USA, Spain a few centuries back, and alas, you know about those Democratic Country-USA coups, all of it, and there are hundreds in Tijuana, in a colonia, attempting to get to the land of milk and honey.
She’s been here four months, and she lives with three others in a room, and her Spanish is good, and she had that open face, open to talk, give us directions to another mercado, and there you have it in a nutshell.
As I have repeated — Fuck the USA and may it — politicians, bankers, military, the lot of them, even Ivy League scum, companies — go the way of the dodo.
Over the past two hundred years, the United States has played a important role in the economic and political activity of Haiti, its close neighbor to the south. The United States’ refusal to recognize Haiti as a country for sixty years, trade policies, military occupations, and role in Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s removal from Haiti are little known by Americans, but significant for the development, or rather, lack of development in Haiti. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and has economic and health statistics comparable to those in Sub-Saharan Africa. A major factor in analyzing the state of Haiti today is its relationship with the United States both now and throughout history.
As I have always said, even having lived in France as a punk with my family, Fuck the French, too:
On April 17, 1825, the French king suddenly changed his mind. He issued a decree stating France would recognize Haitian independence but only at the price of 150 million francs – or around 10 times the amount the U.S. had paid for the Louisiana territory. The sum was meant to compensate the French colonists for their lost revenues from slavery.
Baron de Mackau, whom Charles X sent to deliver the ordinance, arrived in Haiti in July, accompanied by a squadron of 14 brigs of war carrying more than 500 cannons.
Rejection of the ordinance almost certainly meant war. This was not diplomacy. It was extortion. (sources)
Well, you can go down the line of dirt empire racists: French, Portugal, Italy, Dutch, Belgium, Germans, England, USA, Spain, and it all comes out this way for myriad of peoples and cultures and tribes:
The r
esulting racial wealth gap is no metaphor. In metropolitan France 14.1% of the population lives below the poverty line. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, in contrast, where more than 80% of the population is of African descent, the poverty rates are 38% and 46%, respectively. The poverty rate in Haiti is even more dire at 59%. And whereas the median annual income of a French family is $31,112, it’s only $450 for a Haitian family.
These discrepancies are the concrete consequence of stolen labor from generations of Africans and their descendants. And because the indemnity Haiti paid to France is the first and only time a formerly enslaved people were forced to compensate those who had once enslaved them, Haiti should be at the center of the global movement for reparations.
Yes, Mari, and thousands of Haitians in Tijuana, and the Mexicans I have spoken to love the Haitians, and here we are, the end of Empires, PLEASE:
Little Haiti, City of God: Others had similar stories about their struggles trying to survive in Tijuana.
“We are suffering because we don’t have homes, they won’t give us jobs and much less, we all know we are not wanted in the United States,” said a man named Evans.
The city of Tijuana has said it’s trying to help the Haitian migrants, but there’s not much it can do considering the city is overwhelmed with migrants from all over the world.
And as of now, all the region’s shelters are saturated with migrants and don’t have room for anyone else. (source)
So, the average stupid Democrat and Republican, the lot of them, love the suffering, love their stock options, love their military masturbation tools, love their exceptionalism, love the power of the elite to non-profit exploit the poor into cushy jobbs, or love the punks like Trump of Graham or Crenshaw or Desantis, well, the list is very long for these sponges and leeches and ticks on the American coffers and mindset.
As we say, fuck the rich and fuck the middle class and fuck the fuckers who spend money on lattes and laugh at Costco and wait for their next trip to Cozumel, and fuck the entire system that has turned the world upside down. Haitians I have worked with in Portland, well, let’s see, six language, from a boat builder, a weilder, stuck in Oregon, trying to get a job. SIX languages, while my bosses’ fucking emails read like third grade ESL students’ work.
So, most Mexicans outside of Tijuana know about 10,000 Haitians here, and, here we are — Tijuana and I saw many Haitians here, in the central part of town, outside the church, everywhere.
[Photo: View of “Little Haiti,” a neighborhood of some 40 houses, built for refugee families near the Embajadores de Jesus church, in the suburbs of Tijuana, Mexico on March 11, 2018] (Sources)
Just a few miles north, San Diego, and then Coronado Island, the biggest criminal enterprises, the biggest crime bosses, the US Navy and the SEALS. Every nanosecond of fucked up copy from these leeches and prostitutes called the Press, aka presstitutes, talking about the Dirty *elensky, the dirty Zionists leading him, financing him and advising him, well, I just want to get the provervial bat, and bam, in a dark alley, bye bye, well, Blinker to Yellen to Kagan to Nuland to Soros to, you get the picture.
Well, as we say, Fuck the Governments, the UN, the USA:
To the Mexican government:
The Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) should evaluate whether Haiti ought to receive differentiated asylum procedures under the Cartagena Declaration. Conditions in Haiti appear to merit such treatment, which would both provide greater (and appropriate) protection for Haitians and would reduce the time it takes to resolve asylum claims.
The Mexican government should allow freedom of movement for asylum seekers and migrants. The COMAR should amend its policies to allow for the transfer of asylum claims to other states in Mexico. The National Migration Institute (INM) should provide greater accessibility to obtain a formal permission to leave the state (oficio de salida) to migrants who want to do so. Both the INM and the COMAR should provide Haitians with information regarding where they can obtain shelter and connect with humanitarian organizations in the state to which they travel.
The COMAR and the INM should hire Haitian translators to ensure that immigration and asylum procedures are carried out in languages Haitians can understand. COMAR and INM staff must receive training on inclusive reception of diverse populations. COMAR and INM must improve interagency coordination through liaison on documentation and transfers.
Mexican government oversight organizations should take further steps to ensure the human rights of Haitians are respected. The Ombudsman’s office known as the Centro Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH) should be present at COMAR and INM registration centers and border checkpoints to monitor National Guard and INM practices. The CNDH should issue further precautionary measures to the INM to ensure that Haitians are not subjected to excessive force or other human rights violations and are allowed free movement in the country without racial profiling.
The Mexican federal government should provide access to long-term legal status to Haitians beyond refugee status including complementary protection and a pathway from temporary to permanent residency.
The INM must ensure that the CURP (Clave Unica de Registro de Población) is provided to humanitarian visa holders, asylum seekers, refugees, and other Haitian residents in Mexico. The CURP, an identification number necessary to conduct most basic activities in Mexico such as opening a bank account or access to healthcare and employment, must be given at the same time as the other documents to allow Haitians to begin working as quickly as possible.
The Mexican Federal government should work with the manufacturing sector to facilitate job opportunities for Haitians in northern Mexico. The INM must ensure that Haitians are given information on getting a Mexican tax identification number in order to work in this sector.
To the U.S. government:
All Title 42 expulsions to Haiti must cease and asylum processing be restarted at ports of entry. The Biden administration must ensure fair assessment of Haitian asylum claims through training of asylum officers, an updated country condition report, and ensuring access to counsel and interpretation. In the wake of Title 42, Haitian asylum seekers should not be forced to prepare their cases from immigration detention or wait for their hearings in Mexico.
Redesignate Haiti for temporary protected status (TPS) to extend the eligibility date for protection against deportation to those currently with TPS and to those who have arrived since July 29, 2021, given that conditions in Haiti have worsened since then.
The United States should prioritize resettlement of Haitians from third countries in the Americas and create additional protection pathways and complementary pathways to the United States from Haiti. These should include use of humanitarian parole for those harmed in the Del Rio encampment, families expelled either since the September 16 district court ruling or the March 4 court of appeals decision outlawing expulsions of those likely to be persecuted or tortured, and all those expelled after the CDC announced, on April 1, 2022, plans to terminate Title 42 on May 23.
Within new asylum border procedures that have been announced, if Haitians specify alternative removal to Brazil or Chile should they be denied asylum, DHS should facilitate removal to those countries only if asylum is denied and after appeals are exhausted. This avoids removals from the United States without assessment of individual cases and allows for coordination on migration between countries in the Americas in a way that respects the rights and choices of asylum seekers. No child born to Haitian parents in Brazil or Chile should be removed by U.S. officials to Haiti without DHS proving the child would be safe and better off there and without an assessment of the family’s ability to alternatively be removed to Brazil or Chile, should they so indicate that preference.
To UN agencies:
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) should prioritize analysis of the international protection needs of Haitians. UNHCR should assess conditions on the ground in Haiti and, with other UN agencies, should issue a non-return order for Haiti. The UNHCR’s Quality Assurance Initiative should prepare a country packet on Haiti for the head of the COMAR for consideration of Haitians claims under the Cartagena standards. The UNHCR should also prepare a legal considerations paper clarifying how different kinds of stays in, and ties to, Brazil and Chile should (or should not) affect Haitian asylum claims elsewhere. UNHCR should also monitor the treatment of Haitians at the U.S.-Mexico border and ensure that they are not blocked from accessing territory and effectively seeking asylum.
The InternationalOrganization for Migration (IOM) should provide technical support to INM for immigration functions and integration of migrants. This support should include training on human rights practices during immigration processing and on carrying out future transfer programs, and assistance for online immigration functions. The IOM should provide more direct cash assistance for humanitarian visa holders as well as legal and technical support to Haitians seeking eligibility for work in Mexico.
To facilitate Haitian integration in Mexico, UNHCR and the IOM should work to quickly expand the pilot program for work permits extended to Haitians. They should also broaden the criteria for those who are eligible for the program. UNICEF and UNESCO should work with Mexican schools and hospitals to ensure access for Haitian children to education and healthcare.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights should prepare a thematic report on human rights of Haitians on the move in the Americas. (sources)
So, I was going to get into the other aspects of Tijuana, of the border, of three million people just south of the stolen territory of Mexico, California, San Diego, a pure example of excess, dirty Military Mafia, the entire scam of land speculation and hateful Americans, whites, wanting their 40 acres and a three car garage and five hundred horse power in the three autos.
You’ll get another one, on a friend and her sister dealing with la migra, the jack-booted INS and ICE, and then Amish in Tijuana getting medical treatments and buying medications for the brotherhood back home in New York, Ohio and Pennsylvannia.
So much in a eight hour period, if one just fucking stops, asks, listens and treats human beings like human beings from anothe era, as your compadres and brothers and sisters in arms.
[Photo: The Catedral de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, the first catholic church in Tijuana, Mexico]
La Lucha!
Key Takeaways: The Zapatistas
The Zapatistas, also known as the EZLN, are a political movement made up of indigenous activists from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
The EZLN led an uprising on January 1, 1994 to address the Mexican government’s indifference to the poverty and marginalization of indigenous communities.
The Zapatistas have inspired many other anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements around the world.
Legacy
The Zapatistas and the writings of Subcomandante Marcos have had an important influence on anti-globalization, anti-capitalist, and indigenous movements across Latin America and the world. For example, the 1999 Seattle protests during the World Trade Organization meeting and the more recent Occupy movement that was kicked off in 2011 have clear ideological links to the Zapatista movement. In addition, the Zapatistas’ emphasis on gender equality and the fact that many leaders have been women has had an enduring legacy in terms of the empowerment of women of color. Over the years, the dismantling of patriarchy has become a more central goal for the EZLN.
Notwithstanding this impact, the Zapatistas have always insisted that each movement needs to respond to its own communities’ needs, and not simply emulate the methods or goals of the EZLN.
As we say, fuck the MAN. That is , fuck the Fortune 5,000 companies: Sources.
[Photo: Maria de Jesus Patricio, who seeks to be the country’s first indigenous presidential candidate, attends a political meeting at the Hemiciclo to Benito Juarez monument in Mexico City on January 24, 2018.]
Fuck the stupid Americanos, really, fuck them all, the bloody arrested developed fucking dangerous and rabid and recklessly misinformed and miseducated and dead-from-the-neck-up Americanos, Yanquis.
[Photo: Zapatista National Liberation Army leader Subcomandante Marcos (L) smokes a pipe during peace talks on February 24, 1994, in San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico. Omar Torres / Getty Images]
the concept of a marine park is deadly, man, but emblematic of how weaponized k12 is, and how daily life is a land mine field, as each step into our lives is filled with Capitalist Snipers
Yeah, I protested Sea World. Yeah, I protested the Oregon Zoo and the elephants with huge knots and sores on feet. Yes, remember Mona?
She was beaten, caught on camera: After El Paso underwent a media maelstrom in 2005 with the community calling for the elephants at the Zoo to be sent to a sanctuary and the enclosure shut down permanently, the city council promised to come up with a plan to greatly improve the Zoo’s inadequate elephant exhibit. It’s reported that the Zoo will add a “whopping” 5,000 square feet – less than oneeighth of an acre – bringing total space for Juno and Savannah to little more than an acre. Elephants in the wild easily walk tens of miles a day, which serves to maintain foot and joint health. If this is the best El Paso Zoo can do – or can afford – it should give up keeping elephants.
Oh, those alligators in downtown El Paso, and my friend, Luis Jimenez did a sculpture remembering that bizarre slice of history: The alligators were first removed in the mid-1960s due to pranksters from nearby University of Texas at El Paso, then known as Texas Western College, as well as vandalism. Students from the college once removed an alligator from the plaza and, as a prank, placed it in the office of a geology professor. There were also many cases of people throwing rocks at the alligators, and one alligator had a spike driven through its eye. After a brief return in the early ’70s, the alligators were permanently moved to the El Paso Zoo.
Now now, his piece is being replaced, man, so much for a dead artist’s art: And those alligators?
When the alligators where first brought here in the 1880’s, they were a huge success!! people from all over the country would come and visit the alligator park. Even tho the alligators were the talk of the town, many thought they were a huge danger to humans, especially curios little kids.
It turned out that it was the other way around!!!!!
The poor harmless alligators were being tortured. Kids and careless people would throw rocks and things to the alligators to get them to move or to do something crazy.
There was also a 1953 incident in which pranksters took an alligator named Oscar out of the plaza pool and put him in a professor’s office at Texas Western College. Four months later, Oscar was again snatched from the pool, but he was thrown back in before police arrived. Oscar was found dead in the pool soon after.
In 1965, two soldiers were arrested for throwing rocks at the alligators.
An alligator named Chama died immediately, and another, Zal, died a short time later. The alligators were moved to Washington Park Zoo in late 1965.They were brought back to the plaza in 1972 and were surrounded by clear plastic shielding. They went back to the zoo in 1974. Humpy, the last of the plaza alligators, died at the zoo in the mid-1990s. (sources)
Sadism drives the human soul, unfortunately.
Yep, Flipper’s trainer, and the Cove:
Ric O’Barry, the animal’s trainer, has told how after Kathy ended up in a tiny tank, she was driven to the brink in captivity and forced herself to stop breathing.
The shocking incident in 1968 is one of a number of apparent dolphin suicides – said to be possible because of the self-aware creatures’ famously high intelligence.
“The suicide was what turned me around,” O’Barry previously told Time. “The industry doesn’t want people to think dolphins are capable of suicide, but these are self-aware creatures with a brain larger than a human brain.
“If life becomes so unbearable, they just don’t take the next breath. It’s suicide.” (source)
Just a year after she left America’s TV screens, O’Barry was holding Kathy in his arms at the Miami Seaquarium when she simply began holding her breath until she died.
After letting her go, he explained she sank to the bottom of the tank.
“Every breath they take is a conscious effort,” O’Barry said. “So they can end their life whenever they want to and that’s what Cathy did.
“She chose to not take that next breath and you have to call that suicide.”
Back to Tijuana:
Dumb tourist tour while our spouses and partners were at the clinic getting ready for stomach surgery, banding or stomach cutting to stop or help stop the obesity.
Dumb Americans in a van, and a sad sad of a Tijuana native playing up all the goofy tings about Tijuana — soccer stadiums, IMAX, this and that western ugly thing, including Costco?
Then this fellow told the stupid white lie of the code of statues of horses: I remember being told this decades ago, about equestrian statues and how there was a ‘code’ that sculptors and designers followed. Simply put, if the horse has all four hooves on the ground then the rider died of natural causes. One hoof raised means as a result of injuries in battle. Both hooves raised means the rider died directly in battle.
So, this fellow took these Americanos around town to look at statues:
Ahh, so the driver said there are Hondurans here, and those from Haiti.
Thousands of migrants with hopes for the U.S. are living in limbo in Tijuana as a legal battle over whether to end a pandemic-era policy that has restricted asylum access for nearly three years heads to the U.S. Supreme Court. (source)
So Tijuana has people coming here with money, too, and taking up the best properties, leaving the residents and natives who work hard here with fewer and fewer affordable housing choices.
Three million people in Tijuana, and the guide says they all want to stay, and many want to go to USA.
But this fellow doesn’t give the full picture for slap happy Americanos looking for trinkets.
“Where it used to cost around $1,000 to make the journey from Central America, it now costs up to $12,000, making shuttle migration impossible,” said Elizabeth Oglesby, an associate professor at the centre for Latin American studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “The only way for families to stay together is for women and children to migrate.”
More often US intervention in the affairs of these small and weak states has been deliberate, motivated by profit or ideology or both.
“The destabilisation in the 1980s – which was very much part of the US cold war effort – was incredibly important in creating the kind of political and economic conditions that exist in those countries today,” said Christy Thornton, a sociologist focused on Latin America at Johns Hopkins University.
Just a little two and two together makes for four, and the onion skin has to be pulled back whether on the crimes of zoos and Sea World’s, or the crimes of American policies in Central America.
But Americans are drunk on stupidity, and myopic, and ugly in overt and accidental ways just a tourists.
I’m here for a friend’s medical procedure, but it’s been years since I was in this shit hole
Naval Special Warfare Leadership Education and Development Command, or NLEAD, is located at Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado (NAB), part of Naval Base Coronado, California.
There’s really two different reasons why we’re beginning to work in the communities with community-based organizations, and one is, of course, to spread a general awareness about Navy SEALs to young men that are coming up. But, more importantly, we’ve had a number of Navy SEALs from the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. area in particular and we wanted to find a way where we could kind of reinvest in those neighborhoods that we’ve come from and we knew that, by teaching these young men mental toughness and physical fitness, that we would be able to help them reach their full potential.
MARTIN: I have to assume that recruiting is part of it, or at least getting a look at potential recruits. Is that a part of it?
WILLIAMS: Well, we don’t really recruit. That’s the thing. The Navy has recruiters. We don’t. We spread the message about Navy SEALs. Being a Navy SEAL is something you have to self-select and if someone else convinces you that this is what you need to do, you’re going to get to a point in Navy SEAL training where you’re going to quit because it wasn’t your idea. (source)
All that anchors away shit in the water around here, complete welfare cheating system, San Diego.
Gallagher “did … with premeditation, murdera wounded male person” under his care by “stabbing him in the neck and body with a knife” while battling ISIS in Mosul in May 2017, according to the charge sheet dated Friday.
Cmdr. Tamara Lawrence, public affairs officer with the Naval Special Warfare Command, said the Navy is taking the allegations seriously.
“We train and operate in dynamic, complex and ambiguous environments and our operators are empowered and trusted to independently make difficult decisions during missions,” Lawrence said in a statement. “They have consistently proven that their empowerment and trust is warranted. Allegations that indicate otherwise are, and will continue to be, investigated by the appropriate military and law enforcement authorities.”
He is also charged with shooting at a male and female noncombatant near Mosul in June and July of 2017, respectively. (source)
Makes me want to puke: U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar of Lubbock, Texas, died in Mali on June 4, 2017. His death is being investigated as a homicide. 2 Navy SEALs, 2 Marines charged with murder in death of Green Beret: Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar was strangled to death in Mali.
SEAL Team leaders investigated for alleged sexual misconduct. SEAL Team leaders in Africa sent home while under investigation.
But I am in Tijuana, where the friend of mine is getting a surgery her own insurance coverage will not cover — “You may have heard the term “bariatric,” but what does it really mean?
Well, if you do a quick Google search, you will find that bariatric means “relating to or specializing in the treatment of obesity.” When you hear the term “bariatric” being used in a medical setting, it is referring to the treatment, prevention, and causes of obesity.
Obesity is a serious health condition classified by excess body fat that can greatly affect your health. It is linked to a long list of chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, osteoporosis, and stroke.”
And, Tijuana is a bedroom community for San Diego, and the folks here speak English and cater to Americans from California, Texas, Colorado and then Canadians, too.
Flying into this place, I see the cancer spreading into the hills. San Diego and Tijuana:
San Diego County’s population increased 8 out of the 11 years between year 2010 and year 2021. Its largest annual population increase was 1.2% between 2011 and 2012. The county’s largest decline was between 2019 and 2020 when the population dropped 1%. Between 2010 and 2021, the county grew by an average of 0.5% per year.
Ahh, in 1900? 17,700 residents in 1900.
For Tijuana?
Ahh, unity, USA, that old Chlamydia Capitalism:
“State Farm will no longer provide home insurance to new California customers because of wildfire risks and an increase in construction costs, the company said Friday.
On Saturday, the insurance company stopped accepting applications for business and personal lines and casualty insurance in California, the company said in a news release.
State Farm said it made this decision because of “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure and a challenging reinsurance market.”
The largest fire in California last year, the Mosquito Fire, covered over 100 square miles and put over 9,200 structures at risk. The fire destroyed more than 70 structures.”
Ahh, so the guys I’m talking with say the Tijuana cartels — two of them — are into legit businesses, and have worked out with the government to do their business but to not engage in street wars. Hmm.
Tijuana residents take part in a peaceful rally outside a military base during a visit by Mexico’s president.
Fucking good neighbors, USA:
The sun sets in Tijuana, Baja California, on the border with San Diego. (sources)
That’s the tortilla curtain — people work in San Diego, get three or more times the wages, but come home to Tijuana for a home four times less, or maybe one-fifth the cost.
Cry for me Chlamydia Capitalism.
We need revolution:
The structural inequality within our economy is so pronounced, and so deeply built into the system, that when you enter the workforce in today’s United States, you’re in all likelihood not going to be doing anything that truly helps the economy. That builds wealth for your community, and makes your living standards able to go up in the long term. You’re going to be working in a service-based economy that, beyond its chain restaurants and retail stores, has occupations which even more clearly represent “bullshit jobs.” Work that you’re able to recognize as absurd and pointless because you know that no matter how much you sacrifice for it, you’re not fulfilling a productive role. The vast majority of U.S. workers aren’t making goods, or building infrastructure, or doing anything else that betters society in the macro sense. They’re only acting as middlemen for corporations that no longer see the prosperity of imperialism’s center as in their best interests.
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We’re still better off than the workers in the neo-colonies, yet that’s not any comfort to us, nor should it be. Because not only is a global economy set up to hyper-exploit most of the population ethically appalling, it’s a situation that’s designed to ultimately doom the workers in both the peripheries and the core. The destruction of our living standards has been instrumental to the intensification of neo-colonial exploitation, as well as the other way around. When the U.S. was deindustrialized, the corporations became able to ship more jobs into the poor countries, which they claimed would be mutually beneficial but in reality has destroyed both the American and Mexican economies. As Washington’s wars have expanded, the campaigns to bomb, drone strike, and occupy the formerly colonized world have been made possible by the dismantling of our social welfare system. Greater unemployment and austerity in the core have been necessary for greater militarist violence and wage slavery in the peripheries.
Ahh, these words are now on the watch list, the green-yellow-red warning list, secret lists of writers and journalists and academics, espousing narratives other than support Chlamydia Capitalism and Isra-Hell Firsters sadism.
These capitalists want to divide and disease and conquor. Bad water, leaky sewage, shit jobs, zero safety nets, dog-eat-dog, and here we are, in Tijuana, for a surgery not covered in the USA in this case, a surgery five to eight times more cosly in the good old grand old flutter diaper bag, USA.
No Insruance, No Medical Care, 600,000 losing Medicaid coverage, and the avalanche continues, while the dirty Little David Winson Churchill Cocaine Cowboy Comic Steals Steals Steals.
Tijuana sewage has overwhelmed an international wastewater treatment plant in San Diego, causing 30 million gallons a day of partially treated sewage to flow into the Pacific Ocean
Reports of sewage leaking over the border into the San Diego region stretch back at least to the 1930s. Significant improvements were made in the 1990s, but Tijuana’s wastewater facilities haven’t kept pace with its population growth. Many poorer communities remain unconnected to the city’s sewer system.
Significant upgrades to wastewater facilities in Mexico are expected to kick off this year. More than $470 million has been slated for such work under a deal struck last year between Mexico and the United States. (sources)
And then Beggin-ensky is getting all our money. A good one here, from a commentator: William PY Liew
That comedian is just playing the part of a president without the intelligence and competencies to be a real president and a wise & capable leader to a country that desperately need one now. That comedian is nothing more than a Joker shamelessly begging from just about every nation in the world to send him money and weapons to get more of the people who trusted him get killed every day. It’s the Ukrainian people who have themselves to blame for choosing such an incompetent and ineffective person to be their president & leader in the first place!
While we have this bullshit climate wrong headedness:
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors said it will divest from any company that engages in the exploration, production, drilling or refining of coal, petroleum or natural gas… i.e. fossil fuels. (Union-Tribune)
TIME did this really great dive into the politics behind a San Diego proposal to charge people for every mile they drive, why it backfired and what it means for the rest of the free world.
Chula Vista declared its city is in a climate emergency, joining over 2,000 cities that have already done so. (Union-Tribune)
Scientists in San Diego have linked one of the biggest dam collapses in California history to climate change. (KPBS)
Here’s all the woe one fence along a coastal bluff in Del Mar can bring. (Union-Tribune)
Why the Natural Resources Defense Council stands apart from its environmental peers on the debate over rooftop solar in California. (Inside Climate News)
This spot in Carlsbad fertilizes the eggs of White Sea Bass which are then taken to Catalina Island to grow up in ocean corrals. (CBS 8)
A utility line near Old Town caught fire last week, putting a stop to nearby trolley service, closing freeway ramps in the area and knocking out power for hundreds nearby. (Times of San Diego)
California can again set its own tailpipe emissions standards for cars, a policy once blocked by former President Donald Trump’s administration and now reversed by President Joe Biden. (AP)
Medical care, man, medical care:
For 70 years, most Americans have supported single-payer government-run health insurance?
Yet consumer activist and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader argues in his new book that there is “an emerging left-right alliance” in the country that could “dismantle the corporate state.”
Interviewed about the book on May 7, 2014, Nader told Wisconsin Public Radio host Joy Cardin that majorities of liberals and conservatives agree on a number of issues, such as raising the minimum wage.
Then he made an attention-getting claim about the enduring popularity of “single-payer” — a health insurance system in which everyone is covered by the government and the government pays all the bills.
Ahh, fuck the Americans, no? MIC, Jamie Dimon, Bloomberg, all those fuckers, man.
A 1982 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, citing polls, argued that most Americans believed there was a “need for national health insurance and that it would require larger government intervention.”
A 2003 article in the American Journal of Public Health said public opinion generally ran in favor of health care reform.
And a 2009 article by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a widely recognized authority on health care, said polls as far back as the 1930s show Americans have generally supported “the goals of guaranteed access to health care and health insurance for all, as well as a government role in health financing.”
the sheer prostitution of it all, all the lies, anti-tank weapons by Raytheon to Ukraine on the Streets of Guadalajara as Crensaw, Trump, Desantis, Graham want to invade Mexico . . .
In late state Chlamydia Capitalism, the brakes on the trains, of course, do not work. You know, if one product in the millions produced by the Snake Oil Salesmen/Women causes great harm, you would never expect the National Guard or Bruce Willis to come to the rescue and shut it/them down. End of discussion:
“This product is not only recalled, not only taken off the shelves, but all the companies and nerds and sales folk are subject to, well, fines, jail time, bye bye.”
Shit dog, that’s 6,000 foods just for one poison: Sucralose is the most widely used artificial sweetener in the United States. Most commonly sold under the brand name Splenda, the chemical is used in over 6,000 food products.
A new study finds a chemical formed when we digest a widely used sweetener is “genotoxic,” meaning it breaks up DNA. The chemical is also found in trace amounts in the sweetener itself, and the finding raises questions about how the sweetener may contribute to health problems.
At issue is sucralose, a widely used artificial sweetener. Previous work by the same research team established that several fat-soluble compounds are produced in the gut after sucralose ingestion. One of these compounds is sucralose-6-acetate.
Our new work establishes that sucralose-6-acetate is genotoxic. We also found that trace amounts of sucralose-6-acetate can be found in off-the-shelf sucralose, even before it is consumed and metabolized.”
Susan Schiffman, corresponding author of the study and adjunct professor in the joint department of biomedical engineering at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (source)
But there are trillions for the merchants of the other death products, the guns, bombs, missiles, tanks, jets, all of those great Ivy League and Wall Street secured investment products. All those people making money in, on, from, outside of, tied to, under, connected to the US Military Blood Lust.
All those weapons, Nazi-approved, or, Isra-Hell Tested, sent to despots, Nazis, thugs, all sent to destroy people.
The latest and greats shit, AI infused. Get this one:
Notice the pure inhumanity and spinelessness of yet another Colonel in the Merchant of Death school:
[Photo: A US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone. AFP]
“Killer AI is on the minds of US Air Force leaders.”
An Air Force colonel who oversees AI testing used what he now says is a hypothetical to describe a military AI going rogue and killing its human operator in a simulation in a presentation at a professional conference.
But after reports of the talk emerged on Thursday, the colonel said that he misspoke and that the “simulation” he described was a “thought experiment” that never happened.
Speaking at a conference last week in London, Colonel Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, head of the US Air Force’s AI Test and Operations, warned that AI-enabled technology can behave in unpredictable and dangerous ways, according to a summary posted by the Royal Aeronautical Society, which hosted the summit. (sources)
+—+
These are the sicarios, the hit men, the cartel killers, the absolute most dishonest and welfare cheating people on earth — uniformed, civil servants, lackies, military industrial complex freaks, all the left and right putrids who support funding these sons-of-bitches.
Ahh, no more drag party today?
Fucking freaks on both ends of the putrid argument:
Defense Department leaders have stepped in to stop a drag show scheduled for Thursday at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, according to two defense officials and a U.S. official.
The show, which was in celebration of Pride Month, was approved by Air Force leaders, but Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, told the Air Force it is not Pentagon policy to fund drag shows on bases and the show should be canceled or moved off base.
Drag shows and events on military bases have become a politically contentious issue in recent months, with conservative politicians and pundits arguing the military should not be spending taxpayer money on them.
We have issues, no, in Chlamydia Capitalism: Hot news, “Jeffrey Epstein Once Had Chlamydia and Tried to Contact Larry Nassar From Jail” —
In his outside life, Epstein generally tried to social-network up — avoiding fellow sex criminals to court the company of billionaires and world leaders, who had their allegedly nefarious reasons for hanging out with him. But while in jail, Epstein apparently wrote a letter to Larry Nassar, the notorious team doctor for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team serving a 175-year sentence for sexually abusing scores of Olympians and other patients.
You get the picture, no? We have glioblastoma research, and well, that’s a deadly cancer my father-in-law just died from, 11 months after diagnosis. Cool research into that cancer, but when you have Chlamydia Capitalism up and running, the money, trillions, goes to war, satellites, censor programs, AI-AR-VR so the buck never stops HERE.
Two new studies have uncovered a vulnerability in different forms of brain tumors that may make the cancers susceptible to the same treatments. The brain tumors are gliomas, which are among the most lethal cancers.
One study focused on diffuse midline gliomas, which occur most often in children. The other study focused on gliomas with mutations in the IDH1 or IDH2genes, which tend to occur in adults.
Both investigations led to a similar insight: Some gliomas become dependent for their survival on one of the ways that cells produce chemicals called pyrimidine nucleotides, which are components of DNA.
The dependence of certain glioma cells on this process, called de novo pyrimidine nucleotide synthesis, creates a vulnerability. And the new research suggests that a drug may be able to exploit this vulnerability for the benefit of patients with gliomas. (source)
How about ZERO money, my money, my fucking taxes, given to the Epsteins of the world, the money changers, the war mongers, the grifters, all of them in the Billionaire Club and most in the Millionaire Club, you know, the continuing criminal enterprise honchos?
Ahh, that Y gene?
The imminent – evolutionarily speaking – disappearance of the human Y chromosome has elicited speculation about our future.
Some lizards and snakes are female-only species and can make eggs out of their own genes via what’s known as parthenogenesis. But this can’t happen in humans or other mammals because we have at least 30 crucial “imprinted” genes that work only if they come from the father via sperm. (The Y Chromosome Is Vanishing. A New Sex Gene Could Be The Future of Men)
Ahh, so now I know why there is so much interest in transvestites and transsexualst suiting up fly F-16s. Too bad these dudes with boobs have no uteruses, damn?
So, while the dirty Zelensky and his dirty cabinet and administration get the trillions, and do the dirty work of terrorism 101, a la Palestine before the Nakba — and his cabinet and close associates are dual citizens (think Israel and Ukraine) — we got some problems, man, of which could easily be focused on by real humans, real thinkers, real policy makers, but that pimping and prostitution ring called Congress, the Senate, the Revolving Door, DC and Virgina, K-Street, the lot of them, it is the disease that keeps on giving generations after the disease is set loose (pick your poison):
Watch the guy on this guy’s short video. Ozempic, now, approved for 12 year olds and up for so-called obesity. Imagine that, in the back pockets of Big Pharma, the cult of the criminals with PhDs and MDs!
How many F-16s does that Nazi *elensky want? 20, 40, 100, 200? General Dynamics? Oh, Lockheed Martin! Sicarios with slide rules!
Start them out young, Lockheed Martin: A 14-year-old U.S. citizen charged in Mexico as having worked as a drug cartel hitman was found guilty of homicide on Tuesday and sentenced to three years in prison, the maximum for minors. (source)
Fuck, our sicarios look like this: In aerospace industry, female execs soar to top. Boeing has had a woman at the helm of its defense, space and security business since 2016.
Yeah, Mexico and the US, some invasion, no?
Amid renewed fear mongering about an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border, this week’s 175th anniversary of the 1846–1848 war the U.S. government instigated with Mexico is a reminder that throughout U.S. history, invasions have gone almost exclusively from north to south, not vice versa. A near-continuous series of invasions—military, political, and economic—moving from north to south has helped produce the poverty, violence, and insecurity driving people to migrate from south to north. The current humanitarian crisis at the border, with record numbers of unaccompanied minors desperately fleeing violence, insecurity and poverty, reveals the consequences of an interventionist policy that’s even older than the U.S.-Mexico war.
To be honest, interventionist is an all-too-common euphemism for imperialist invasions. The first invasion came in 1806 when U.S. military forces entered Mexican territory (then still controlled by Spain) and established a military base in today’s Colorado. In total, including the 1846–1848 war that resulted in the U.S. government seizing nearly half of Mexico, the U.S. military has invaded Mexico at least ten times.[1] Across Latin America, U.S. forces have invaded southern neighbors more than 70 times, leaving occupying armies for months, years, and in some cases decades.[2]
When you do this,
…. Your society will weaponize EVERYTHING, man, from food stamps to social security; from school lunches to highways; from education to journalism. Until, oh, until, everyone stays in their lane, does there “cool” little jobs, and turns the other way when the stench of this nation permeates on July 4, or any day that Grand Old Flag flutters.
This is a country of war, of occupation, of thug missile non-diplomacy, and we have it here, now, the Neocons (many from previous semi-liberal Jewish enclaves in education) and their Project on a New GloboCop America, all there in living color.
Elsewhere in Latin America, the U.S. military occupied the Dominican Republic in 1903-1904 and 1914, and for nine years in 1915-1924. Neighboring Haiti suffered new occupations in 1914 and for nearly 20 years in 1915-1934. In Central America, Honduras experienced eight invasions and occupations in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1920, 1924, and 1925. The U.S. military occupied Nicaragua for two years in 1909-1910 and for around three decades in 1912-1933. U.S. troops invaded Guatemala in 1920. Naval vessels threatened the use of force in the waters of Costa Rica and Panama in 1921 and El Salvador in 1932.[15] U.S. warships entered Latin American ports some 6,000 times between the mid-nineteenth century and 1930, in classic “gunboat diplomacy” style—in other words, political-economic bullying through displays of military force.[16]
How many studies have been quashed because the university eggheads and administrators relie on the money from the thugs, and that in itself is the protection racket the billionaires and millionaires have set upon Mother Earth.
Better to have kids dosed up weekly with experimental and expensive poison drugs, than, well, not give the killer Nazi’s of the world their cake and icing and forks and plates. And so it goes, no criticism allowed, as you go through the daily news about these criminals in government, private sector, media, politics, entertainment, finance, education, you name the arena, and they will hire the thugs to lift your ass out of the room if you have one question that just might question THEM, their goals, their hidden and not-so-hidden agendas.
Back to sexual assaulter, Epstein:
Forget about the real news, the real topics, the stuff that would make this a better world, and that doesn’t go better with CocaCola or Chlamydia Capitalism, or any flavor of Disaster-Penury-Casino Capitalism.
ahh, revolutionary love at a bar, well, not hit or miss, but pretty intense!
Che states in his essay, and “Socialism in Cuba” that “the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love.”
A revolutionary expresses his love by initially caring about the poverty and oppressive conditions that people endure without much hope for change within a political system. If one did not care or was ambivalent about the terrible conditions that the masses experience daily, then revolutionary activity would not ensue. The revolutionary has the responsibility to use the best means available to overthrow an oppressive regime. It receives the respect and support of the people by its continual effort to bring justice and equality within a political structure, and uses its knowledge of strategies and tactics to defeat the enemy. This may involve the use of guerilla warfare as occurred in Cuba, nonviolence as used by Gandhi in India or a variety of approaches as employed by Subcomandante Marcos in Mexico.
Essentially, revolutionary love needs to have a corresponding behavioral component. According to Che, there are additional components to revolutionary love. (sources)
So, in a small town pub, and alas meeting Kim and Kevin, brothers in their 68-ish years, and then Kevin from Guatemala, and then a woman from Puerto Rica and one ffrom Peru, and then a guy from Jalisco, and then a guy from Sandy, Oregon, three toours in Afghanistan.
So is goes with Paul, Father Confessor.
Yeah, read, Power and the Glory:
In the world of Graham Greene’s 1940 novel, The Power and the Glory, it’s a bad time to be a Catholic. The book’s hero is an unnamed priest on the run from Mexican authorities after a state governor has ordered the military to dismantle all vestiges of the religion. Churches are burned. Relics, medals, and crosses are banned. The price for disobedience is death. While many clerics give up their beliefs and accept their government pensions, the unnamed priest travels in secret, celebrating Mass and hearing confessions under the cover of night. Yet he’s also a gluttonous, stubborn, and angry man drowning in vices, and the religious ambition of his earlier years has been replaced with a constant desire to drink, hence Greene’s term for him: the “whiskey priest.” Tired of risking his life, the priest even prays to be caught.
A violent, raw novel about suffering, strained faith, and ultimate redemption, The Power and the Glory received literary acclaim—but not without catching the attention of Catholic censors, who called the book “sad” and denounced its “immoral” protagonist. Despite—or even because of—this vexed history, Greene’s novel is the perfect book to read during the season of Lent, which began Wednesday. Stereotypically a time for modern Christians to abstain from Facebook or chocolate or alcohol, Lent is the most dramatic time of the liturgical year—40 days of prayer, fasting, and cleaning one’s spiritual house, in hopes that honesty might lead to penance and good deeds. One vision of Lent emphasizes transcendence over struggle: the American Catholic writer Thomas Merton called it “not a season of punishment so much as one of healing.” But Greene’s dark novel and its deeply flawed protagonist offer a richer way to think of faith and self-reflection—one that average Christians might find more accessible and realistic than romantic narratives about belief. (sources)
It’s fucking weird that I can end up in a bar-restaurant, and I don’t do that much these days, and the floodgates of confession come my way.
What is it about me, the journalist, the gatherer, the listener, the collector, the person who asks and listens, and alas, I have connections to almost everything I hear from people I have never met in my life before.
Two brothers, Kim and Kevin, just back from Florida, for the ending of the old man’s life, 92 years old, an old Navy guy who asl got into orchids, by the hundreds. They were there for his last two months, and the five acres of land, and the house, and the guy put down the old dog before the sons showed up, and he was on chemo, got sent to the ER, and he insisted, that is, yelled, after 14 days, “I want to fucking go home and die.”
One brother worked sandblasking nuclear subs and Warthogs and all sorts of military jets. The other brother is a yacht travelers, taking yachts, or delivering them, to various locales.
He’s working on whale watching in Depot Bay, and he is a guy who has been around the world, on boats, and he is a crusty guy, and looks like Hemingway, and he is here, in Newport, still working the boat scene, and his brother Kim is visiting, and there we have it — two hours of these guys telling me their stories.
Americans are full of the world, especially these folks, and alas, the ones who were not Americanos — Peru, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Mexico — they are here, on some walkabout or lost soul search for something. In a bar, drinking at the bar, and it is a restaurant too, well, that is the fabric of this sort of father confessor shit.
The news that President Biden will begin a military withdrawal that will conclude on September 11th came as no surprise. When he released his interim national security guidance last month, you tore through it, highlighting passages and making margin notes. Look, you told your squadron commanders and chief master sergeants during a professional development session: For the first time since 9/11, there’s no mention of combating violent extremism across the globe. “Afghanistan” twice versus “Russia” five times and “China” fifteen. A signal that perhaps the Forever War was ending, that after years of consensus across the national security establishment that the military needed to re-focus on preparing to fight rival nations, the moment had arrived.
This guy I met was from Sandy, Oregon, and he was quick to point out around him that he wasn’t from Portland, as if that would have been a badge of disgrace or something. He was on the coast, in the bar, drinking, out here from his home base doing some tree work for the company he works for. He is a tree man, an arborist, maybe. He came to me to tell me his brief perspective:
“I was a fucking kid in Afghanistan. Eighteen when I signed up and then, bam, three tours, three hellish tours, and then, age twenty-six, I got out, and fuck I was not prepared for the culture, the people, the society,” he said, showing me fist and hand tatooes that display his combat loyalty to the military.
“I knew, shit, man, I had been in this regimented society, and not ready for all the levels of class and crazy distinctions and pecking orders in civilian life, and then here I was, out at 26, and I am still a kid, really, and the stuff I did and saw, no kid is prepared for that, and what the fuck, all of that perspective? It has been a crazy transition.”
I told the fellow that I had worked with homeless veterans, and that all my female clients had been raped by fellow uniformed soldiers.
““That’s the fucking shit, man. Can you believe it? I know that all females I knew in the military were sexually assaulted. All of them. And, where is the publicity, the stories? Nobody knows, or at least there’s no talk about that on Veterans Day. Imagine that fucking mess for women, the head trip, the fucking abandonement by fellow soldiers? Nothing on that on Fox or CNN.”
Yep, the pain, the sinking into a bottle or shooting up with hypodermic. For me, all my clients of the female persuasion — homeless, fucked up on some self-medicating drug — raped:
Nearly one in four U.S. servicewomen reports being sexually assaulted in the military. Why has it been so difficult to change the culture?
[Photo: Kellie-Lynn Shuble in front of her storage locker in Coraopolis, Pa., in July. She was harassed and assaulted throughout her time in the Army.Credit…Danna Singer for The New York Times]
[Photo: The Marine Corps deemed Shmorgoner unfit for service because of her PTSD in May. She now works as a horse trainer at Hidden Brook Stables in Maryland.Credit…Danna Singer for The New York Times]
Yeah, fuck the uniformed services, that system of Merchants of Death. Fuck this country. Fuck the people who skirt over it, or go to a pub and eatery to end their day with booze, on-tap ale and munchy carbs.
The brick oven pizza doesn’t cut it when so many Americans are suffering, dying inside, full of the demonic poison of military, empire, exceptionalism, capitalism, dog eat dog competition, and blind patriotism which is really nothing more than obedience to the master, like pathetic dogs in a Palenque ready to attack one another dog.
Mexico:
Fuck these mother fuckers. Fuck the military industrial complex. Fuck Biden. Fuck the Raytheons. Fuck Army-Navy-Air Force-Marines-Coast Guard-National Guard-Uniformed Public Health-Border Patrol-ATF-ICE-FBI-Homeland Security-Secret Service-All of the Uniformed Mother Fucking Fascists.
So, here we are, now, in a bar, at the bar, that is, and because this white guy, me, is so out there, so yakking it up in Spanish with those native speakers, so willing to make acquaintances with people, so Hemmingway and Neruda and Melville and Robert Bly and William Stafford like, I am the sponge, the father confessor.
Ahh, the problem is Americans are dead in the spirit category. And children. And clueless how their side of the team is screwing them equally bad as the other side.
I’ve been in this position for, what, 50 years, since age 16, earlier, and old and young folk, but mostly old when I was young, talked to me about their lives, and this is in Sonoita, or El Paso, Tucson, Bisbee, Seattle, Newport, Spokane, Vietnam, all throughout Europe, Mexico, the islands, everywhere, and they were in various forms or stages of life. Interesting, hard working, gamblers, ranchers, ex-military, well-off folk, struggling folk, waitresses, laborers, this and that, and so many wanted me to bear witness..
I am that sponge, that listening post, that person who listens to strippers in Tucson and Chihuahua, and then listens to murdering sons of bitches in Guatemala, ex-CIA.
You want to know how many COLLEGE students confessed, how many MILITARY confessed, when I was their teacher? I have been in a million situations, where people open up … sort of like the floodgates crashing through, man.
I’ve had cool people like Robert Bly and Winona LaDuke and James Crumley and so many others tell me about their lives. David Suzuki telling me about his family’s internment in Canada, and the pain of that still in his bones as an old man. The power of stranger confessionss, I got that early in my pimple faced life:
I researched why we don’t talk to strangers and what happens when we do for my book, The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World. This effort put me in the company of anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, archeologists, urban designers, activists, philosophers, and theologians, plus hundreds of random strangers I talked to wherever I went.
Strangers, what a word:
For more than 8,000 years, humans have lived in cities – a form of social organization characterised by a superabundance of strangers. But only recently have psychologists begun studying what happens when we talk to all these faceless strangers we’re surrounded by every day.
Learn, engage, risk, and talk: Talking to strangers can also make us wiser, more worldly, and more empathetic, says Harvard University professor and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, Danielle Allen. When she was teaching at the University of Chicago, Allen was repeatedly warned by colleagues to stay away from the poorer side of town. She believes that this “fear of strangers was actually eroding a lot of [her peers’] intellectual and social capacities”. (sources)
Give it a try: BE engaged, interested, open, questioning, listening, holding strong conversations, open ended interviewing, and just being present, and motivational in the discourse. That’s all for tonight, 11 PM PST!
… Carter, Clinton, W-Bush, Ray-Gun, Obama, Trump, Biden . . . but that’s low hanging political rotting fruit, but then a Chomsky saying what about us unvaxxed folk?
“Sube a nacer conmigo, hermano” / “Rise to be born with me, brother.” — Pablo Neruda
So, those first two books of The Divine Comedy, Inferno and Purgatory, by Dante follow his journeys from hell to purgatory. In Inferno, Dante meets the poet Virgil who guides him through the rings of hell. Once the two reach the bottom of hell, Virgil continues to guide Dante through the next realm in Purgatory.
Throughout this epic adventure, Dante also presents ideas concerning the afterlife. These ideas range from simple descriptions of the two realms to more remarkable ideas of who exactly goes where after death and why. Dante also paints a picture of how sinners will be punished in hell and oppositely, the process of how sinners are redeemed in purgatory.
Like hell, purgatory also has a structure in which each level focuses on a different sin. Unlike hell, sinners in purgatory work their way up through the seven terraces of purgatory in order to finally reach heaven. To advance to a new terrace, sinners must first work off the sins from the previous terraces.
In each terrace, sinners face a unique punishment that they must endure until God is satisfied. Of this process, Dante writes,
“God demands we pay the debt.
Don’t dwell upon the form of punishment
but on what follows; think that at the worst
it cannot last beyond the day of doom” (10.108-111).
Then, there are those using that other thing, Bible, contrary to Dante’s notion of sinners redeeming themselves, sees it as impossible.
Ephesians 2:8-9 states,
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”
This is all fun and games, no? Then, really, which lines will “they” cross which will convince you they (you know who I am talking about) are not worthy of respect, honor, valorizing, power, holding sway over us, the poor, weak, misbegotten? The Salt of the Earth:
Jimmy Carter?
On July 19, 1979, the Sandinista uprising culminated in their gaining full power in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas first move as new political leaders was to declare a state of emergency and expropriate land and businesses owned by the old dynastic family and friends, nationalize banks, mines, and transit systems, abolish old courts, denounce churches, and nullify the constitution, laws, and elections. A socialist state was born in Nicaragua. President Carter immediately sent $99 million in aid to the FSLN in an attempt to keep the new regime pro-U.S.. Simultaneously, however, Cuban officials were advising the FSLN on foreign and domestic policy and the FSLN sought an alliance with the Soviet bloc which they reached by March 1980 signing economic, cultural, technological, and scientific agreements with the USSR. Deliveries of Soviet weapons from Cuba began almost immediately after the signing of these agreements. (source)
Once it became clear to Washington that the FSLN would not moderate its policies, President Carter authorized the CIA to support resistance forces in Nicaragua including propaganda efforts, but not including armed action. The Sandinistas supported expanding socialism abroad, including sending weapons to leftist rebels in El Salvador beginning in 1980 and continuing for the next ten years. Some argue that this international support from Nicaragua was also in effort to insure that the Soviets would fully support and protect Nicaragua in case of a U.S. attack or intervention. Sandinista support for the Salvadoran rebels had a profound impact on U.S.-Nicaragua relations throughout the 80’s
Ray-Gun?
On December 1, 1981, Reagan signed an order that allowed the CIA to support the Contras with arms, equipment, and money. This order was implemented in conjunction with an overall strengthening of U.S. presence in Central America and the belief that covert activities are the most effective way to put pressure on a regime. This shift of foreign policy away from the Carter administration’s non-intervention culminated in June 1982 with the Reagan Doctrine which called for supporting democratization everywhere. It was at this point that the goal of the covert operations in Nicaragua shifted away from one of simply interdicting arms to one of supporting a change in government. Iran-Contra historian Theodore Draper, among others, argued, that this was the real goal all the long.
To help popularize the foreign policy changes of the Reagan administration certain propaganda and media initiatives were implemented to sway public and congressional opinion. In January of 1983, National Security Decisions Directive was signed, entitled Management of Public Diplomacy Relative to National Security, institutionalizing public diplomacy. In effect, it was a special planning group within the NSC to coordinate public diplomacy campaigns.[6] This group was America’s first peacetime propaganda ministry. Every administration tries to influence public opinion, but not until Reagan was it so institutionalized. Another use of white propaganda, which Richard Miller described as “actually putting out [the] truth, straight information, not deception,” was the State Department’s Group of Latin American Public Diplomacy (S/LPD).[7] This group, in actuality, reported directly to the NSC despite being housed within the State Department. Both committees utilized a variety of media propaganda and control efforts. A fourteen page memorandum dated March 20, 1985 from North to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane explained over 80 publicity stunts to influence public and congressional opinion before upcoming Contra aid votes.[8] The public diplomacy officials also leaked select pieces of information that they wanted made public to journalists who favored Reagan. Strategic leaking and declassification of documents allowed the Executive Branch to manage the public perceptions of the American efforts in South America.
Yeah, elected president, Daniel Ortega, and this is Carter’s legacy, then Reagan’s?
My buddy, Toothless in Wisconsin (read my series on his life and my life intersecting with him here on Substack and part one over at Dissident Voice, he’s toothless because he was attacked by an inmate in a country jail in Wisconsin, who kicked his face for 92 seconds, straight. Then, six years in prison (four other years total in and out of jails) with Mengele Dental Hell, i.e. no dental care, that pretty much took his chompers out.
It’s a badge of honor, survival, etc. Now, is Kelly redeamable? He was in trouble because of booze, that old time religion in USA, and in Wisconsin, in the town her grew up in, 53 bars and drinking holes, and 43 churches. In a town of 9,000.
Look, he has traveled many pathways, many heights, and he has fallen and picked himself up and read books galore and has thought out a life now that is part monk, part estranged from family (on their part), part surviving the death of a woman he called friend and mate for over 40 years, and he is still on paper, man, age 65, still on paper, out of the hell mentality of DAs, cops, and judges.
Ahh, redemption, a la Neruda:
Canto general is, as intended, a monument of Western and specifically American literature. As a chronicle of a captive and abused people scheduled for redemption, it recalls the Hebrew Bible; as a historical vision of originary calamity and ultimate deliverance, it brings to mind Paradise Lost; and as a democratic catalogue of New World humanity, it follows Whitman, whom Neruda explicitly invokes. Canto general also looks forward, to Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, where the backwaters of the New World are also the center of creation, or to Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy, another factual chronicle of conquest and rebellion across the span of Latin American history related with prophetic indignation. Che Guevara carried a copy of Canto general with him in the Sierra Maestra.
For all that, Canto general is often more great than good. Neruda’s gift is lyrical, not narrative, and his ostensible epic, on inspection, is so many lyrics in historically chronological order. Neruda sometimes writes least about what is most important (the best of the 15 sections, “The Heights of Macchu Picchu,” is also among the shortest), and vice versa. And, unsurprisingly, Neruda’s weakest lines are often his most polemical, propagandistic, the poet seeming to say what he should feel or think instead of what he does. None of this much qualifies the glories of the thing. Part III of “Macchu Picchu” concludes, about everyone:
“they all faltered on awaiting their brief daily death:
/ and the bitter brokenness of each day was
/ like a black cup they drank from trembling.”
My translation may improve on some others, but the rills of plangent vowels are lost.
“Sube a nacer conmigo, hermano” is probably the most famous line of the poem: “Rise to be born with me, brother.” History presents a choice, Neruda says, between dying alone each day or being born at last with our brethren. If the notion is embarrassing today, this does not seem entirely to our credit. (sources)
So, also, talking with my friend who is going through hell with a domestic violence case against her husband, now going on 8 months of his incarceration in county jail, and delay after delay in the state’s case against him.
Can she see this far ahead now, after four-plus years, and now, almost a year more, of this fellow deceiving her, denigrating her, attempting to murder her soul and spirit and literally her body?
That’s a large arena from which she has to contend with the demons he put into her life, a la C-PTSD.
Forgiving?
On Feb. 3, 1998, as a bloodthirsty mob of Texans bayed outside a prison in Huntsville, Texas, Gov. George W. Bush defied the appeals of religious conservatives and ordered the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted ax murderer who found God on death row.
Leigh Anne Gideon is a former reporter for the Huntsville Item. Huntsville is where Texas has its death house, and since 1924 all the state’s executions have taken place there. Gideon has witnessed some of them, sometimes along with members of the condemned man’s family. “You’ll never hear another sound like a mother wailing whenever she’s watching her son being executed,” she says. “There’s no other sound like it. It is just this horrendous wail.”
Contrast that sound bite, taken from a remarkable National Public Radio documentary called “Witness to an Execution,” with what George W. Bush said in the second presidential debate. The subject had turned to the lynching of James Byrd, a black man who had been dragged to death, and Al Gore had made reference to the alleged need for a hate crimes law. Bush hit him back:
“The three men who murdered James Byrd, guess what’s going to happen to them? They’re going to be put to death. A jury found them guilty, and it’s going to be hard to punish them any worse after they get put to death. And it’s the right cause, so it’s the right decision.”
Bush smiled.
For Bush, that was hardly an uncharacteristic moment. Earlier in the campaign, he mocked Karla Faye Tucker, the pickax murderer who had become a born-again Christian and had pleaded for her life. “Please don’t kill me,” he mimicked her in an interview with Tucker Carlson of Talk magazine. Bush said he was misrepresented. (sources)
I remember Bush, in the back pockets of chemicals industry, vetoed a bill that doctors, nurses, humans, all over the USA, wanted to pass that would have gotten poison manufacturers to poison control markers in their products which would help ERs and EMTs and doctors counteracting poisonings. You know, a little bit of money spent to have markers in 13 or 14 of the most common poisons humans use. W Bush said he did not want to unnecessarily burdern private for-profit companies with more costs to do business.
No redemption for me, all the POTUS scum, but here, specifics. Dead people in ERs because of the time to attempt to test stomach material to see what the antidote might be, but then, these other grander more extensive death warrants these George W Bush’s mete out.
The bill Bush vetoed (HR 976) would expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, by $35 billion over the next five years, to $60 billion. That would be enough, Democrats say, to provide health coverage to 10 million children whose families are low-income but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid—about 4 million more than the program now covers.
Oh, remember Clinton and his affairs and his Arkansas mafia and his witch Hillary?
Man oh Man, no redemption there: This fellow shows redemption:
Shortly after becoming the U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, former President Bill Clinton publicly apologized for forcing Haiti to drop tariffs on imported subsidized U.S. rice during his time in office. The policy wiped out Haitian rice farming, seriously damaged Haiti’s ability to be self-sufficient, and contributed to Haiti’s forced urbanization that likely increased the earthquake toll. Dr. Paul Farmer, who serves as Clinton’s deputy in Haiti, told Democracy Now! today: “I felt a sense of great relief just hearing him say that. I felt grateful for it as an American.”
Human stain, with no redemption at all in their futures: “We came, we saw, he died,” she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi’s death by an aide in between formal interviews. “I’m sure it did” have something to do with her very own visit to Libya just days earlier, she continues.
Watch her, 12 seconds of hell!
Oh, it is a very very Dante’s Circles of Hell World in my book.
This is how they roll at Harvard, at Stanford, City of London, K-Street, J-Street, US Chamber of Commerce, Military Merchants of Death Industrial Complex:
The Nobodies Written 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 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 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 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
+—+
That Lincoln?
Thirty-eight Native Americans were hanged on Dec. 26, 1862, as ordered by former President Abraham Lincoln, after the 1862 Dakota War, which was also known as the Sioux Uprising of 1862. The sentences of 265 others were commuted.
THE FACTS: A military commission sentenced 303 Sioux fighters to be executed after deadly fights white settlers and soldiers had with Indians angry about the loss of their homeland and lack of access to food. Harold Holzer, author of several books on Lincoln, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview this month that Lincoln reviewed “every one of these capital cases.”
According to reporting by The Associated Press, the original trials were a farce, some taking as little as five minutes. In addition, the Indians were denied counsel and did not understand what was being said.
After the review, Lincoln decided there was evidence that 39 Sioux were guilty of murder or rape during the uprising and ordered their execution. The remaining 264 sentences were commuted. In addition, one of those sentenced to be executed received a reprieve before the Dec. 26, 1862, hanging of 38 Sioux warriors.
Lincoln went against the advice of fellow Republicans in Minnesota who warned that showing mercy would “carry a large political cost” and that “lessons needed to be taught,” according to Holzer. (source)
Redemption?
Do I need to fill in the blank____________________________________________?
For those I believe do not get any redemption? Kissinger at 100?
How about history speaks about the United Snakes of Chaos-Lies-Deceit-Death-Terrorism?
A new book by David Michael Smith, Endless Holocausts: Mass Death in the History of the United States Empire (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2023), estimated that the U.S. empire is responsible, or shares responsibility, for close to 300 million deaths.
Smith writes that “the almost inconceivable loss of life in these endless holocausts arguably makes this country [the United States] exceptional, though in a strikingly different way than its apologists intend.”
Exceptional in its violence and killing prowess, which is truly shameful. (source)
Yikes, yes, Oh-bomb-uh. But you know about his mother?
In 1965, the CIA backed a coup in Indonesia that resulted in the deaths of millions of alleged communists who were identified by lists provided to the Indonesian military by the CIA. One person suspected of helping to identify names for the blacklist was Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother, who worked as an anthropologist in East Java, a communist stronghold.
[Photo: Ann Dunham in Indonesia in the early 1970s.]
Redemption my ass! Rogue State
William Blum talked about his book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, published in 2000 by Common Courage Press. The book was cited by Osama bin Laden as one that Americans should read. The guest responded to telephone calls and electronic mail.
Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.5
Though not as easy to quantify, has also led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American instructors. (source)
Alas, just since 2014, Nuland and McCain and the other creeps pushing Ukraine into a Nazi-Hell Hole, all the people in Klanada, U$A, EU, U-Inbred-Kingdom, Five Myopic Eyes, EuroTrashLandia, Isra-Hell who support, cheer, fund, and overtly and covertly perpetrate the machinations of death, destruction and deceit, well, there you have it, no redemption given by yours truly. As if they give a shit!
The pig, Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky doubles down on his previous call for the state to segregate The Unvaccinated from society: “How can we get food to them? Well, that’s actually their problem.”
… you don’t just have to go to the Environmental Working Group to see how damaging the stuff the “scientists” put into food, air, water, soil, babies!
I want to remember Rachel Carson’s spirit. I want it to be both fierce and compassionate at once. I want to carry a sense of indignation inside to shatter the complacency that has seeped into our society. Call it a sacred rage, a rage that is grounded in the knowledge that all life is intertwined. I want to know the grace of wild things that sustains hope.
A team of pro-fluoride researchers led by California’s dental director intentionally omitted data from a study seeking to undermine the forthcoming National Toxicology Program (NTP) report linking fluoride exposure to neurodevelopmental damage in children, according to documents released last week.
The documents — obtained through a California public records search and posted in a press release by the Fluoride Action Network — show that the team, led by Dr. Jayanth V. Kumar, a dental surgeon, conducted a meta-analysis of the scientific literature on fluoride’s neurotoxicity and found a link between fluoride exposure and lowered IQ in children at low levels of exposure.
However, they omitted the data and wrote a paper concluding there was no evidence of a link.
Four rounds of peer review rejected Kumar’s manuscript as “poorly researched,” “internally inconsistent” and committing “unashamed exaggeration” before the journal Public Health finally published the study last month. (source)
If this is not monster-like, disgusting, perverse, then, you are lobotomized: So many popular baby food brands contain dangerous levels of mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic, according to a new investigation by a House of Representatives oversight committee. Exposure to these toxic heavy metals can be harmful to babies, since they can slow growth and development, increase cancer risk and potentially lead to behavioral and learning issues.
Nutricia North America (formerly Scientific Hospital Supplies (SHS) North America) Nutricia North America. …
PBM Nutritionals. PBM Nutritionals, LLC. …
Prolacta Bioscience. Prolacta Bioscience.
On every level, they (sic) determine what we die from. Same side of the coin, Dems or Repubs:
Yesterday, The New York Times exposed the Trump administration for bullying governments into weakening international safeguards that protect mothers and newborn babies from the infant formula industry’s deadly marketing. Kudos to our allies like Baby Milk Action for shining a light on this story.
Ahh, sort of like Exoplanets, no, these Xenobiotics? Toxins that are foreign to the body such as drugs, pesticides, and carcinogens.
So, in Capitalism and in this buyer beware dog eat dog world, in this litigation nightmware for activists and individuals attempting to put feet to the fire those evil deeds in this chemical toxin industrial complex, we take one step forward (in our minds), while leaping a hundreds backwards.
Pure theater: But, yes, the film takes its basis from real events – with Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times article The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare serving as the source material for the script.
Oh, of course these highly-paid actors and film crews, all about a one-trick pony.
Think Monsanto: “Problem fixer Michael Clayton is brought in to clean up the mess after one of his law firm’s top litigators suffers a breakdown while representing a corrupt chemical corporation in a multi-billion dollar legal suit. Under pressure to appease the firm’s clients, Clayton finds himself torn between his desire to do the right thing and a pressing need to pay off spiralling personal debts.”
But just because these Holly-Dirt pimps and prostitutes get scripts going and act in these “social justice”-themed flicks, do not expect Capitalists in the biz to be anything but this — overpaid, money hoarding, dream hoarders that they are, too rich to shit properly.
Ahh, which rotten billionaire and rotten family do you want to see portrayed on TV?
Which robber barons do you want to read about?
New or old guilded age?
A couple of decades after the Civil War, the United States entered an era dubbed “The Gilded Age.” It was Samuel Clemens—Mark Twain—who gave us the term. In an 1873 novel, co-written with his friend Charles Dudley Warner, the duo satirized the economic excesses, personal greed and political corruption of the time. The novel’s title, “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today,” was an inspired choice of words.
In Twain’s telling, the era wasn’t a “golden” age—something pure and solid like a bar of gold—rather is was a “gilded” age. To “gild” is to cover something of lesser value with a coat of gold to make it look like what it is not. In Twain’s telling, the era was one in which such a superficial covering disguised a more base reality.
The Gilded Age was a time in which technological innovation drove wonderful new industrial products that improved individual lives, while at the same time creating great wealth and accompanying economic inequality. It was a period of market dominating companies and citizen and journalistic revolts against their control. It was also a period marked by claims of “fake news” and by the election of two presidents who failed to win the popular vote. (Hayes in 1876 and Harrison in 1888.) [source]
Gilding is covering up the crimes, and today, we have so many more criminals in this robber baron-gilded age mafia:
[Photo: Members of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the body charged with oversight of unfair or deceptive business practices.]
These people ARE the enemy, and always has been:
UPDATE, MAY 25, 2023: The Supreme Court (9 to 0) issued its ruling on Sackett v. EPA on May 25, 2023, stripping out key protections from the Clean Water Act, weakening the law, and narrowing its ability to defend the quality of the nation’s waterways. “This decision will cause incalculable harm. Communities across the country will pay the price,” says NRDC President & CEO Manish Bapna. “What’s important now is to repair the damage. The government must enforce the remaining provisions of law that protect the clean water we all rely on for drinking, swimming, fishing, irrigation and more. States should quickly strengthen their own laws. Congress needs to act to restore protections for all our waters.” (source)
It wouldn’t be hyperbole to call it the most important water-related U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case to come along in a generation. Indeed, the outcome of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the first case to be heard in the court’s 2022–2023 term, will determine the future efficacy of the Clean Water Act by deciding whether wetlands are—or aren’t—deserving of federal protection.
Given the close relationship between wetlands and the larger system of streams, rivers, and tributaries to which they belong, the court’s ruling is certain to have a profound impact on the health and quality of all of America’s waterways.
Headline after headline: The new Gilded Age: 2,750 people have more wealth than half the planet (2021)
versus
[Photo: Political cartoon from the Chicago Labor Newspaper in 1894 criticizing the Pullman Company]
Although middle-class philanthropists and technocratic politicians gave voice to policies that began to curtail inequality, they did not generate the conditions that made such policies either politically possible or effective. That took decades of widespread, sustained, and explicit anti-capitalist organizing from working people — in labor unions, youth groups, radical political parties, and coalitions of mass protest — from the 1870s through the 1940s. Cold War liberalism’s backlash against such radicalism was fierce and helped fuel the rise of the right.
Progressives and New Dealers also achieved their reforms by reaffirming the Gilded Age’s ideological and legal commitments to white supremacy, imperialism, and xenophobia. The mainstream labor movement marginalized radicals and underwrote imperial nationalism. Signature New Deal legislation — the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act — discriminated against women and African Americans by excluding domestic and agricultural workers, valorizing the white male family wage earner.
The “solutions” that ended Gilded Age inequality, in other words, became a crucial seedbed for our own era’s historically distinct expressions of inequality. (source)
From corner to corner, the capitalists and their academics and their law schools and business schools and all those marketing departments, all the psychological warfare practitioners, all of those prostitutes called Senators and Congressmen, all of them, from top to bottom, they are the reason flouride is in the water, brothers and sisters, and that “a little of poison is permitable” ethos is all about CAPITALISM. Oh, they know how to parse the rhetoric and deploy the barristers and legal eagles — “There is no solid proof this or that industrial concoction can cause cancer.” You know the trick.
Try as you may, Counterpunch writer: “What are our options? The most discussed are expanding the court to allow the appointment of several liberal justices, mandating term limits for justices, and impeaching justices. (Clarence Thomas, we’re coming for you first!) But none of those are likely in the foreseeable future. So, here’s the real bottom line on last week’s terrible, duplicitous, irresponsible, environment-destroying, climate-warming decision by the Supreme Court: It’s on us. We need to fight back. That means organize ourselves, our neighbors, and our communities to prevent local and state governments from paving what little paradise remains. It means protesting, boycotting, and otherwise blocking developers, by whatever means necessary, from destroying wetlands and the many species – including humans – that depend on them.” (Supreme Duplicity)
Hit that Silent Spring Institute for more on the cancerous capitalists:
Abstract
Consumer products are important sources of exposure to harmful chemicals. Product composition is often a mystery to users, however, due to gaps in the laws governing ingredient disclosure. A unique data set that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) uses to determine how volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) from consumer products affect smog formation holds a partial solution. By analyzing CARB data on VOCs in consumer products, we identified and quantified emissions of volatile chemicals regulated under the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act (“Prop 65”). We here highlight individual chemicals as well as consumer product categories that people are likely to be exposed to as individual consumers, in the workplace, and at the population level. Of the 33 Prop 65-listed chemicals that appear in the CARB emissions inventory, we classified 18 as “top tier priorities for elimination”. Among these, methylene chloride and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone were most prevalent in products across all three population groups. Of 172 consumer product categories, 105 contained Prop 65-listed chemicals. Although these chemicals are known carcinogens and reproductive/developmental toxicants, they remain in widespread use. Manufacturers and regulators should prioritize product categories containing Prop 65-listed chemicals for reformulation or redesign to reduce human exposures and associated health risks. (source: More than 5,000 tons of toxic chemicals released from consumer products every year inside homes and workplaces)
We can’t leave this up to a non-profit or the US Chamber of Commerce or Industry Lobby Groups:
